


The Gift That Bonds Us

by NinjaRiderWriter



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Family Reunion, Mentorship, Mother-Son Relationship, Secret Identity, Social Outcasts, Takes a more pragmatic outlook on HtTYD and its characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-04-26 01:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14391726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinjaRiderWriter/pseuds/NinjaRiderWriter
Summary: One last time, she only wanted to see her son one last time. Fifteen years since Cloudjumper took her away, Valka returns to Berk to see her son before leaving forever. But the son she left has grown up, and he's taken after her in more ways than one. For Hiccup, his life suddenly changes when he finds a mysterious dragon lady in the woods.Set during HtTYD. AU.





	1. Returning to Berk

Valka knew that what she was doing was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. She was doing something she had sworn to never do, for fifteen years she had held up her solemn oath, for fifteen years she lived in isolation. She swore to herself that she would never return to the small island that rested on the Meridian of Misery, twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. Berk, her home.

Or rather, her former home. She had grown up there, had fallen in love, had a beautiful son, but that had all changed during a dragon raid. When Cloudjumper, her beloved dragon companion, had taken her from her family for the sole purpose of belonging with him and his flock, the dragons that peacefully dwelled under the Alpha's care. Berk had never truly felt like a home, Valka had been an outcast amongst her people.

She remembered when she spoke her mind about the dragon situation, on how they shouldn't fight and kill dragons, but try to befriend them. Her peers had mocked her, thinking her heart too soft for a Viking, they saw her as some alienish dweller that lived among them. They ridiculed her; shot her bewildered glares that told her that she and her ideals weren't welcome. She had been loathed and thought of with contempt, all because she thought differently.

Valka, the only Viking ever who wouldn't,  _couldn't_ , kill a dragon.

Even Stoick, her beloved husband, had viewed her ideals as foolish and thought her naïve in the ways of the world. He claimed that dragons and Vikings were destined to clash, to kill one another until one side was finally extinct.

She remembered that raid so vividly; if she concentrated hard enough she could still smell the smoke and blood of that fateful night when dragons attacked the small village of Berk. The night she realized that she had been right, and her husband and peers were wrong.

Dragons could be befriended. Viking and dragon could coexist with one another. She had seen it when she had raced towards her home when she caught sight of a dragon, Cloudjumper, breaking into her son's nursery.

Hiccup…

Oh how he haunted her. Whenever she closed her eyes to sleep, she heard his giggling laughter, or his pained cries that echoed deep within her soul. Whenever she saw a dragon and their hatchlings, she thought of her own child, the child she had almost condemned to death. He had nearly died that night, when Cloudjumper had spewed fire from his mouth in self-defense when Stoick attacked him.

He and her husband could have died that night, all because she couldn't kill a dragon.

She couldn't because when she first meet the gaze of Cloudjumper, she had seen not a monstrous devil of the sky as Vikings thought him as, but a gentle, intelligent creature whose very soul reflected her own. He had been playing with Hiccup, rocking his wooden cradle with his claw in such a tender and gentle way it had made her pause in her approach. It was at that moment she realized that she had been right all along. It was proof to everything she believed.

She couldn't kill him. She could only watch in fascination as Cloudjumper turned to face her, his amber eyes so warm and gentle it made her instantly calm. She was mesmerized by him just as much as he was mesmerized by her. They were two halves of a soul, one human and the other dragon, who had finally connected to form one. She remembered how Cloudjumper had accidently cut Hiccup's chin when he had squirmed, she knew that he hadn't meant to and that he wasn't some bloodthirsty demon who feasted on the flesh of children, as some legends told.

She could only watch as the gentle Stormcutter hobbled closer to her, somehow smiling in a way that resembled a human. She could still remember holding out her hand, palm splayed, aching to touch his snout. She almost did.

But then her husband appeared with an axe in hand.

After that it was all a blur. Stoick leapt, Cloudjumper moved, Hiccup cried, fire spread, and suddenly she was in the air, held by Cloudjumper's claws as he flew away from Berk. She could still see Stoick rushing outside with Hiccup safely tucked in his massive arms, crying out to her.

She never saw Stoick or Hiccup again. She swore she never would. Vikings could never live peacefully with dragons, she had realized that when Stoick attacked Cloudjumper. But Valka had never truly been a Viking, and she changed that night when Cloudjumper brought her to his Nest on the sole reason of belonging with him and dragonkind. Stoick would be ashamed of her, if he discovered that she was alive and living with dragons, aiding them, protecting them and loving them. He would be so ashamed if he knew that his own wife sided with his mortal enemies.

And Hiccup… oh her sweet child.

He was the only bright light of her life on Berk, aside from Stoick. But Stoick had never truly understood her, for he never agreed with her ideals though he loved her with all his heart. Hiccup didn't understood that bitter feud between man and dragon, he was the only one who didn't see her as some odd outcast. Granted he had been a mere babe, but he had been her son, and though years have passed she still loved him as much as she did when she first held him in her arms. She had loved him –and still loved him- with all of her heart and being. He had been one of the few happy memories she had had on Berk.

He was the sole reason why Valka was now breaking her vow of never returning to Berk. She had to see her son. She didn't return for Stoick, though she still loved him, she didn't return to her companions and comrades of her youth, she returned only to see what had become of the babe she had left in the cradle.

No one would know. She would hide in the shadows of night, either on Cloudjumper's back or hiding away on the rooftops. They would never find out that she still lived. She just wanted a single glance, a single second to see her son.

What did he look like?

She had thought that over and over throughout the years of her isolation, each time seeing a different person. She mostly imagined him as a massive hulking boy, grown out of his infant frailty and had taken after his massive Viking father. She saw him as a hulking boy, easily taking after his father in size and girth, but he would have her eyes. Why wouldn't her son take after his father in size and personality? The world was cruel to those who lived in it, and the thought of her son taking after his Viking father, an experienced dragon killer, always cut at her deeply.

But sometimes she thought of him being like his mother, a kind and caring person, she loved those thoughts. It was most likely wrong but Valka could still dream of a small lean child with her green eyes full of care for those around him, a smart boy who had more brains than brawn, and someone who didn't take after his father but instead his mother. They were wistful thoughts and dreams, but Valka still thought them though she knew that she was most likely wrong.

She knew that Hiccup was most likely what she feared, a perfect Viking. His father was chief Stoick the Vast after all, why wouldn't the son take after the father? Why would he be anything like the mother who had abandoned him? Of all the things she had done, not taking Hiccup with her had been her greatest regret.

Oh how Valka wished she had held him in her arms when Cloudjumper snatched her away from her life as an outcast on Berk, she could have raised her son to love and cherish dragons, instead of learning to kill them.

She never would have been able to though, for Stoick had grabbed him and changed all their lives. Just like when Cloudjumper had grabbed her and taken her away. That night had changed everything.

It didn't matter now, for she and her son had gone their separate ways. She to care and protect the dragons she lived with, and he to most likely slay them.

By Odin that thought hurt her more than a battle axe ever could.

She had to see him.

She had to know.

Valka had to know what had happened to the son she had abandoned while he was still in the cradle.

Cloudjumper crooned lowly to her, still unhappy with her decision to return to her former home if only for one night. He knew her too well to not know that while Berk held her family, it was also home to bitter memories that were better left forgotten.

"I know, my friend," Valka sighed as she stroked his scarred crown, slender fingers tracing the scar that was left by Stoick's own axe from the night Cloudjumper had taken her away from Berk fifteen years ago. "But I just want one look, that's all I want. And after that we can fly home." She didn't mention how the thought of leaving her son and husband for a second time left a bitter and sour taste in her mouth. She didn't tell Cloudjumper though; she was already hurting him by returning to Berk even if only for a night.

As they flew through the night, Valka began to see familiar natural and man made landmarks that she hadn't seen for years. Valka leaned forward in anticipation, soon she would see Berk, soon she would see Stoick, and soon she would see her son.

She soon caught sight of the massive stone statues of angry looking Vikings clutching massive axes and swords, their open maws roaring bonfires that spread light into the darkness of night. Cloudjumper growled lowly as he looked at the village with thin pupils, showing his displeasure and Valka could easily see why and could even relate with her beloved dragon companion.

Berk was burning.

 _The raids haven't stopped,_  Valka thought to herself as Cloudjumper glided closer towards the burning village like a silent wraith.  _If anything, things are worse than ever._

She could only look on towards the burning village, the fire was so bright it contrasted against the night. She saw shadows of Vikings and dragons alike, locked in eternal combat with one another.

Though she had lived there for many years, Valka barely recognized the village of her childhood. The massive pillars of fire were still there as was the Great Hall, but the buildings themselves were unfamiliar to her.

 _Old village, new buildings,_  she thought of the old Berkian proverb. Fighting against creatures who had the ability to breath fire in a wooden village meant that the majority of people knew how to rebuild houses faster than a dragon could burn one down.

The only house she recognized was her old one, Stoick's house. It stood against a hill-like cliff, proudly standing whilst those around it had fallen, like Stoick himself. Her heart twanged oddly when she gazed at the familiar landmark, remembering her days and nights living there with her husband and son. The small added room that Stoick and Gobber had created to be Hiccup's nursery was gone, most likely burnt to the ground by Cloudjumper's fire. But other than that, it was just the way she remembered it.

She could see firelight further up the mountain, she looked at it and recognized the shadowy outline of a small hut that was backed into the mountain.  _They must have finally built Mildew his own home far away from the others, I wouldn't blame them,_  Valka thought to herself with no small amount of rancor as she remembered the bitter aging man, he had always hated her and her ideals. He had been one of the worst of the Vikings to speak against her and her unpopular opinions.

Cloudjumper slowly hovered above a home that wasn't burning; she silently slipped off of Cloudjumper's back and landed on the roof of the house without a sound. Her beloved companion glanced back at her, worry set in his amber eyes before he quickly flew away towards the woods. She silently crawled towards the edge of the roof, thankful that she had her mask on.

She had decided to wear what she wore to scare off any dragon trappers that dared capture her dragons. She wore armor made of hardened leather, a few scuff marks marred the darkened leather from her many fights with trappers, her carmine cape was torn at the edges, and her spiked mask that resembled the King's own likeliness hid her face from the world. The mask was smeared with a bright blue paint that matched the color of the sky she flew in, yellow bands wrapped around the spikes, the spikes themselves were modeled after the Alpha's spikes.

Valka watched from her perch as she saw Vikings running around like headless chickens, waving their sharpened weapons at anything with scales,

"Do  _not_  let them escape!" She heard someone yell to a group of Vikings holding down a net that pinned several Deadly Nadders. Valka felt her heart stop as she recognized that voice, that terribly familiar voice. She leaned closer, holding her breath as she saw a massive Viking barrel through the chaos that littered Berk's narrow streets.

 _Stoick…_  Valka thought to herself as she saw her husband for the first time in fifteen years, her heart pleading to race into his arms, to never leave her beloved ever again, to be his wife once again. Valka looked away, unable to look at the massive red-haired chieftain, suddenly ashamed that he believed her dead when she was very much alive.

 _It's for the best_ ,she thought to herself with no small amount of sorrow.  _It's better that he never knows the shame that I have brought him by siding with dragons… He and Hiccup nearly died that night, all because I couldn't kill Cloudjumper. Even now, I would never raise a blade to any dragon if I were to relive that night once again._

She followed her husband by leaping from rooftop from rooftop. The houses had always been built close to one another so it was hardly any feat to navigate throughout the burning village; she followed her husband like a silent shadow when in reality she was a ghost.

Valka crouched down low on another rooftop, pressed against the carved wooden dragon head as she saw a Monstrous Nightmare in a small clearing, burning away at one of the pillars with it's powerful flames.

She saw Stoick leap at the Monstrous Nightmare, literally beating it back with his massive fists. She winced at every hit, watching the dragon rear back it's head and fly away in both defeat and terror at the massive Viking who still held Valka's heart.  _Oh Stoick… nothing has changed,_  she thought to herself heavily.  _You haven't changed…_

She watched like a silent sentinel as the villagers of Berk swarmed the area where their chief was, but their attention wasn't on him but on the burning wooden pillar. She watched as the pillar finally fell as its foundation was burned away by the Nightmare's fire, and in its place stood a boy, who must have been hiding behind it.

She and the other villagers watched as the metal bowl that held the fire break off from the pillar and roll down the hill, crashing into carts and houses until it reached a group of Vikings struggling to hold a net against a small group of Nadders from flying away. To her joy they leapt out of the way and the dragons fled into the darkened sky.

She turned her attention back to the boy.

The boy was scrawny, skinny as a reed. When Stoick came up to him with a disappointed frown, the boy barely even reached the Chief's elbows. But his stature and height mattered little to Valka, for she instantly noticed his light auburn hair and his green eyes.  _Her_  hair and eyes. She peered closer, as close as she could without showering herself, and saw the faint white scar on the boy's chin, right below his bottom lip.

Valka felt her heart stop as she took the boy in, the visage of a squalling babe overtaking the now almost grown boy.  _Hiccup…_  Valka thought in awe and wonder,  _my son._

She watched as Hiccup glanced around at the crowd of Vikings that surrounded him with unease, looking like a rabbit surrounded by wolves. The Vikings glared at him, their burning distrusting eyes so familiar to Valka, for they were the same eyes that had looked at her with such rancor, the baleful glares directed towards an outcast.

 _Is he… just as I was?_  Valka thought to herself with dawning horror. The thought of her Hiccup going through what she herself had gone through made her heart clench in agony. Oh how she wished she could leap from her vantage point and knock every single one of those Vikings, Stoick included, with her staff and hug her son and tell him that everything was going to be alright.

But she couldn't do that. Not even she could take down twenty armed Vikings and husband and expect Hiccup to come rushing into her arms. She could only watch from afar with an aching heart full of burning frustration that she couldn't do anything without revealing herself.

She saw Hiccup mumble something, she saw anger burning in the eyes of the Vikings, she could hear the faint rumbling grumbles of resentment and anger, all directed towards her boy.

Stoick grabbed his son by the scruff of his neck, easily dragging him as though he weighed nothing, though in reality Hiccup's weight was perhaps as heavy as a newborn lamb. Valka could see the anger and disappointment in Stoick's brown eyes, hidden underneath the visage of chief.

"It's not like the last few times, dad!" Hiccup was trying, and failing, to tell his father as he dragged him through the crowd of angry Vikings. "I mean I actually hit it. You guys were busy and I had a very clear shot. It went down just by Raven's Point, let's get a search party out there before-"

" _Stop!"_

Stoick roared at his son, releasing his grip as Hiccup stared up at him with wide eyes. Valka watched on from the rooftop, struggling with herself to stay where she was.

"Just. Stop." Stoick's voice lowered from that of a shout of anger to a weary, frustrated sigh. "Every time you step outside, disaster follows!" He gestured wildly towards the ruined carts and burning houses that had been destroyed by the bowl of fire. "Do you not see that I have bigger problems? Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed!"

Hiccup glanced around at the massive Vikings that had followed them, their baleful glares burning into his back. "Well between you and me, the village could do with a little less feeding, don't you think?" Hiccup asked as he glanced around at the surrounding Vikings, who grumbled at his words while some placed their hands on their bulging guts self-consciously.

"This isn't a joke, Hiccup!" Stoick said to him angrily, before sighing wearily yet again before he rounded on his only child, "Why can't you follow the simplest of orders?"

"I-I can't stop myself," Valka's son stuttered out, "I see a dragon and I have to just-" Hiccup made a strangling gesture with his small child-like hands, "Kill it, ya know? It's who I am, dad."

Stoick placed a hand against his temple, as though trying to stave off the oncoming headache. "Oh you are many things, Hiccup… But a dragon killer is not one of them. Get back to the house. Make sure he gets there," he told a hulking blonde Viking missing a leg and arm who lightly smack the boy upside the head before herding him towards the house Valka herself had once lived in.  _Gobber,_  Valka realized.

Valka watched the interaction between father and son silently, her heart felt lighter than it had in years, as though some unearthly burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Her son wasn't a dragon killer, her husband said so himself,

She should leave; she had already been on this island long enough. Dawn had slowly crept to them, the sun starting to rise. She had seen her son; she knew that he wasn't a killer of dragons. She should leave.

But yet she couldn't move.

She could only stare, as though mesmerized, as she watched her son slowly walk towards home, his shoulders hunched and his posture defeated. The crowd of Vikings parted away from him as though he carried the plague. Their eyes filled with rancor, those hauntingly familiar eyes.

She noticed that a group of Viking children around her son's age were laughing at him, mocking him for messing up. Anger bubbled within her, the emotion was so strong she saw only a field of crimson, her fingers clenched around her staff.

Hiccup wasn't like his father in the slightest, in both stature and mentality. He was small and thin instead of massive and muscular. He claimed he wished to kill dragons, but Valka saw through that desperate façade, for she recognized what he was trying to do. He pretended to be something that he wasn't, just so that he wouldn't be alone anymore.

Stoick said he wasn't a dragon killer, and she knew that to be true, she just had to look in his eyes. Hiccup tried so hard to fit in with those who weren't like him, trying so hard to blend into the crowd instead of sticking out like a Monstrous Nightmare amongst a herd of grazing sheep. He wanted to be accepted, to be respected, to be loved.

Valka had wished for that once, a long time ago.

She had sworn that she would never return to Berk, but yet here she was, hidden but still there like a silent shadow. She had sworn to return to the Sanctuary after she had seen her son one last time. But she couldn't return, not yet anyway.

She would never let Berk know that she still lived, that she did not feast in the Halls of Valhalla, but still lived in the world of man and dragon. She would never live in this village again. But her son… the son she had abandoned in the cradle, the son who took his mother's title as Village Outcast, the son who was not like his Viking father in the slightest regard, the son who might take after his mother.

 _I can't leave,_  Valka realized suddenly,  _not yet at least._

She would try and help her son, whether or not she showed himself to him, either as a random woman or the mother he thought dead, she did not know.

All she knew was that for fifteen years when she lived in isolation, her son had needed her and she hadn't been there for him.

She was there for him now.

* * *

 

Hiccup felt completely and utterly humiliated as he slowly trudged back towards his empty house with Gobber at his heels, the taunts of Snoutlout still ringing in his head. Nobody believed him that he had shot down a Night Fury, when he really did! Sure nobody saw him do it, but Hiccup had heard the screech and watched as the dark body shot towards the ground like a falling star, he  _had_  shot down the Night Fury and he would prove it… after he ditched Gobber, of course.

Unfortunately, the one handed smith didn't seem to be going anywhere. Gobber was probably one of the few people who actually tolerated him, Hiccup counted the Viking as his friend, though that was mostly because Hiccup didn't have friends and thus would count anyone who talked to him without insulting him as his friend.

"Now its not so much what you look like, it's what's  _inside_  that he can't stand," Gobber explained as he poked the boy in the chest to emphasis his point, his small nudge nearly sent the boy sprawling to his feet.

"Thank you, for summing that up," Hiccup said dryly as he turned around to enter his empty home.

"The thing is," Gobber spoke again and the son of Stoick listened. "Stop trying so hard to be something you're not."

Hiccup wouldn't deny that Gobber's statement hurt him even more than his statement that Hiccup's father couldn't stand him and who he was. Didn't Gobber see that Hiccup was trying to be one of them? He could never stop at it, not until he was finally accepted and, well, appreciated for once in his life. For one day, even if only for that day, he would have loved to be known as just Hiccup, an everyday buff Viking warrior, son of Stoick the Vast, instead of Hiccup the Useless, Stoick the Vast's talking fishbone of a son. "I just want to be one of you guys," he whispered out, hurt evident as he quickly retreated to the safety of his home, quietly closing the door in Gobber's sad face.

Hiccup waited for several moments, leaning against the aged wooden door with a heart as heavy as lead. The house was empty and dark, his father wouldn't be back for several hours, and it wasn't as though there was anyone else living here with them, as Hiccup's mother had died when he was little.

Shaking those thoughts from his head, Hiccup peeked out the window to see that Gobber was gone. He suddenly saw something move. Peering up at the rooftops, he saw what appeared to be a figure crouched on the roof, he blinked and rubbed his eyes for several moments before looking back, nobody was there.

Thinking that he was seeing things, Hiccup quickly crossed through the threshold towards the back door, grabbing one of his father's knives from the table as he did so.

Hiccup threw open the door and raced towards the woods, with only one thought in mind. In his haste the son of Stoick the Vast never noticed an armored figure watching him from atop of a branch on a pine tree, watching him like a silent sentinel.

Hiccup had taken down a Night Fury and he was going to prove it.


	2. The Night Fury

Valka followed her son carefully through the woods, leaping from tree limb to tree limb so silent and quick it was as though Valka did not leap, but rather flew from limb to limb. She had spent much of her life leaping from one dragon to the next whilst they flew, tree branches was something she could handle easily. She leapt from one branch to another without a sound, not even the leaves shook as she moved.

Her son wandered the forest for hours, nose tucked into a small leather book and too focused on searching for the dragon he had supposedly shot down. Valka had heard his annoyed mumbles turn into frustrated screams by the time the sun had reached its climax. He was too focused on finding any sign of dragon on the ground that he never thought to actually look up and realize that someone had been following him like a silent shadow – or rather ghost- since he had left the house.

She could see from her vantage point the scowl on her son's face, how his nose scrunched up and his lips curling as though he smelled something foul. Her son had begun to run out of patience; though Valka had to commend her boy as any other Viking would have given up long before Hiccup. Vikings were impatient and blunt; patience wasn't in their limited vocabulary. But yet here Hiccup was after several fruitless hours of scouring the forest.

Her son had wandered the woods, tripping on practically everything in a less than graceful way that only helped emphasis the awkward stage that he was going through, where he was no longer a boy but wasn't yet a man. He was still growing, though slower than his age mates, and with his gangly limbs he moved as though he lacked balance.

Valka suddenly paused from her leaping, perched against a pine whose thick needles hid her from her son's view. She saw a destroyed tree that looked as though it had been ripped apart.  _Or something crashed into it,_  Valka realized with a frown. Her son had been mumbling to himself about trying to find the Night Fury he had shot down and Valka had been silently praying to Odin that her son was mistaken. She couldn't bare the thought of her son killing a dragon.

She could see a thick rut ahead of her, though Hiccup couldn't see it from his position on the ground. And beyond that, something large and dark was at the center of a small crater. She knew that it was the Night Fury, for what else could it be?

"Oh, the gods hate me. Some people lose their knife, or their mug. No, not me. I manage to lose an  _entire dragon!"_  Hiccup was bemoaning to himself, still unaware that his quarry was literally right in front of him. The boy, in a fit of angry frustration, smacked a protruding branch away from his face, which of course made the branch whip back around and strike him in the eye.

Cursing under his breath, Hiccup glanced at the branch and realized that the entire tree had been ripped in half. He paused in his wandering, alert with a certain edginess as he gazed around at the foliage on the ground, never once did he look above him. He immediately noticed the massive rut that went down a slope. He followed the trail and paused when he saw something huge with black wings right before him. He ducked under a rock in fright, before his curiousness won the internal battle within him and he peeked despite himself. He grabbed the knife from within his fur tunic and held it shakily with both hands.

Valka watched with bated breath as her son slowly stalked towards the downed Night Fury. A _Night Fury_! She had never seen one before, though she knew of them. He was beautiful, though he was bound in rope.

She saw the knife in her son's clenched hand, a knife that looked too big for her son's small hands, a knife didn't belong in her boy's hands as he walked towards a downed dragon.

She was glad that Cloudjumper wasn't with her, for it would have been impossible to hide in the trees when the Stormcutter was so large, Hiccup would have seen them immediately, so only she watched her son from her perch on a tree, staff in hand, waiting and watching.

If Hiccup attempted to kill the Night Fury, she would pounce on him and knock him out with her staff. The thought of hurting her child tore at her, but the thought of her child killing a dragon hurt even more.  _Please Hiccup…_  She silently pleaded to her son, watching him move forward with the knife with wide eyes hidden behind her mask.  _Please take after me and not your father… Don't be a Viking… Be who you are meant to be._

A low roar brought her back to the present. Hiccup, in a moment of glory, had placed his foot on the Night Fury's side, thinking it dead. Her son fell back against a protruding boulder, knife clenched in his hand as the Night Fury stirred from it's slumber.

Hiccup slowly advanced forward, knife tip pointed towards the bound dragon. He felt fear burn at him, but the thought of returning to the village with the promise of a better life was too enticing for him to run away. He had to kill the Night Fury. He would be the first Viking to ever do so, if he killed it than everything would get better! Right?

The son of Stoick the Vast gazed at the dragon he himself had brought down. The dragon was nothing like the boy had ever seen before. it wasn't like a Gronckle, or a Hideous Zippleback, or even a Monstrous Nightmare. The Night Fury was different from all the other dragons that raided his village, where most were large and riddled with horns, the Night Fury was small with darkened flesh molding into patches of midnight scales.

He stared at though mesmerized. His heart leapt to his throat when he realized that he wasn't the only one. A lone green eye, so detailed it looked as though a fiery green inferno had been unleashed inside, stared at him in an unblinking gaze, it's pupil a mere slit. He stood there, knife in hand ready to strike and didn't know what to do.

_I can't back out now,_  Hiccup thought to himself as he fiddled with the knife nervously.  _If I don't kill it, I'll never be welcome at Berk._  That thought, the thought of his eternal suffering of isolation and ridicule continuing, gave him strength. No more would the villagers look at him as though he was an annoying pest, no longer would his father look at him with that disappointed scowl, no longer would he be ignored and mocked by his age-mates, for he, Hiccup the Useless, would be the first Viking to ever slay a Night Fury.

If he killed this dragon than it would solve  _everything_.

He breathed in heavily, gulping for air as though it would give him the strength to stab the dragon's heart. "I'm going to kill you dragon," he whispered at the downed beast, fire ignited in the human's eyes with a sharp determination to end, not only the dragon's life, but his life as a social outcast. "I'm gonna… I'm gonna cut out your heart and take it to my father…" he held the knife in both hands, held above his head, waiting to be plunged into the Night Fury's heart.

Above him, Valka tensed with her staff held at the ready, ready to stop her son from killing the downed dragon, from making the greatest mistake in his life.

"I'm a Viking…" Hiccup whispered, as though praying. The thought of what that word, Viking, meant made Hiccup falter, for he knew that he was the most unViking Viking to have ever walked Berk. He pushed it aside, bitter resentment already building within him at the previous thought.

"I am a  _Viking_!" Hiccup declared to the world, trying to feel proud and strong, but all he felt was weak and terrified. He clenched his eyes shut, as though to blind himself from what he was about to do, but he couldn't help but peek at the Night Fury. The dragon was staring at him with an unblinking eye, it's pupil a mere slit as it continued to stare at the petrified boy who held the knife high above his head.

The Night Fury groaned out another roar, his lone eye never leaving the shaking form of Hiccup. The supposed Viking looked at the dragon's eye, he didn't see any monstrous fury of being bested by a talking fishbone who couldn't lift a hammer or swing an axe, he didn't see any animalistic emotion that made the dragon a monster.

All he saw was terror.

The Night Fury was terrified, of  _him._  Hiccup looked at the dragon and saw not the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death, but a creature that looked so terrified it reminded the boy of one thing.

Himself.

Hiccup was terrified to plunge the knife into the Night Fury's heart, terrified to take a life, terrified to become what he wasn't, a Viking. But he was also terrified of not being a Viking, something that everyone wanted him to be but he could never achieve no matter how hard he tried. He was terrified of his life of loneliness and ridicule, a life of isolation. All he had ever known was terror, from the very beast that laid there defeated before him to his own people, who hated him with passionate fury.

All his life, Hiccup had been terrified.

And now here was another creature trapped by his ropes like Hiccup was trapped on Berk. Hiccup's ropes trapped the Night Fury whilst the boy himself was trapped by the impossible expectations from his father and his people. The Night Fury was just as trapped as he was.

He couldn't do it.

He  _wouldn't_  do it.

He lowered his knife, sickened at the thought of killing this terrified creature lying before him bound in ropes placed by Hiccup himself with his bola launcher.

"I did this," Hiccup said to himself softly with dreadful horror, stepping away from the bound dragon with his knife now pointed away from the dragon. That familiar feel of terror washed over him when he realized that he wasn't and never would be what he should have been, a Viking, along with a powerful wave of sickness at the thought of actually killing the dragon.

He turned away, ready to flee to the safety of his empty home where nobody could continue to hurt him, but the heavy breaths of the Night Fury made him freeze in place, body half turned in the direction of home. He slowly turned around, looking at the bound dragon with horrible guilt.

He couldn't leave the dragon like this, trapped in the woods filled with Vikings who would be more than willing to slit the dragon's throat and rip out it's heart for a trophy. Had anyone else besides Hiccup found the dragon, they would have killed it without a second thought. Yet it was Hiccup who stood before the beast, sickened at the thought of dragon blood being spilt by his own hand, the knife in his hand as useless as the villagers thought him to be.

_It shouldn't be too hard to cut,_  Hiccup thought to himself as he glanced at the rope that was tangled all over the Night Fury's lithe form.  _Surely that's something I can do… I can let it go, at least than one of us will be free._

Hiccup quickly knelt by the dragon's side and started to furiously saw at the rope, the sharpened knife quickly cut through the rope and Hiccup began to cut away at the ropes that tied the dragon's legs and wings. He finally sliced through the last rope.

And suddenly all Hiccup saw was black as he was pinned to the boulder by a large paw. Gasping in terror, Hiccup looked up to see the deadly eyes of the Night Fury burning into him like dragon fire, he was trapped, paralyzed by it's fiery gaze.

_This is it,_  Hiccup thought to himself as he saw the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death rear back it's head to shoot the puny human with it's plasma bolt.  _This is how I die…_

Would his father mourn him? Maybe. Would the villagers mourn him? Probably not. Nobody in the village liked him; to them he was just a nuisance and a troublemaker. Nobody would miss him and that thought hurt the ostracized boy more than anything. Hiccup could only stare death in the face, mesmerized by the dragon's green eyes that stared into him with such intelligence it unnerved him, to realize that this beast was not truly a beast, but something greater. Hiccup looked at death in the face and found himself relaxing despite the pressure against his throat. Maybe if he died, his father could finally stop being so embarrassed of the village's runt,  _his_  runt. The villagers would most likely throw a party to celebrate the fact that he wasn't there anymore to mess up. The thought saddened him, but it didn't hurt as much as it should have. Hiccup looked the dragon in the eye and felt only acceptance of his fate.

Hiccup closed his eyes, waiting for the eternal darkness. Would he see his mother after fifteen years of separation? Was she waiting for him in the entrance of the Halls of Valhalla, waiting to hug and kiss him and shower him with motherly affection that she had once given him when he had been a babe and she was still alive? Hiccup liked to think so. Hiccup waited for death.

But it didn't come.

There was a sudden noise, reminiscent to a rattle shaking. Hiccup opened his eyes. The Night Fury paused as it listened to the noise, relaxing at the sound, it's thin pupils dilating rapidly as it glanced around the forest. The Night Fury released him and Hiccup collapsed to the ground, choking out gasping breaths for much needed air.

When he felt like his lungs weren't about to collapse upon themselves, Hiccup looked up fearfully and blinked at what he saw.

The Night Fury was still there, but the Unholy Offspring of Lighting and Death itself didn't look threatening in the slightest, for the dragon sat on it's hindquarters, eyes fixated on a figure, it's curious and gentle expression reminded the boy of a curious cat.

_Wait, what?_

Hiccup blinked again, realizing that what he saw wasn't a hallucination from lack of oxygen. There was a person in the clearing with him.

The figure was tall, though nowhere as tall as his father, but slim like Hiccup himself. From the way the figure looked, Hiccup saw that the figure was female. Her choice in outfits made him question her sanity though. The figure was decked in hardened leather armor, each individual piece reminiscent of dragon scales, a ripped carmine cape blew softly at a gentle breeze, her mask terrified him, for it was rather akin to some monstrous dragon with its sharp, protruding spikes and bright paint savagely spread across it in a messy, almost savage smear. In her hand was a painted shield and a wooden staff, both ends curved and had rattles on each end. She was shaking the staff ever so lightly, creating more rattle sounds, the noise made him slightly drowsy.

The Night Fury was watching her, entranced by the sound. It's hackles had lowered, and the dragon looked genuinely calm, mesmerized by the rattling sounds as though it was a gentle lullaby.

The woman looked over at him, still lying on the ground, and though he couldn't see her face due to the creepy mask, Hiccup knew she was staring at him.

"Go."

The voice was deep and rough, as though it hadn't been used in ages and with an odd accent, but the voice was still feminine, proving that Hiccup had been right about his mysterious savior's gender.

Hiccup just stared at her, mouth agape.

Valka wished that at that moment, she could tell her son who she was, but she knew she couldn't, not yet.  _He didn't kill the Night Fury; he set it free,_  she thought to herself with her heart threatening to burst with pride.

She had seen him cut the ropes herself, she saw the two make eye contact and somehow she  _knew_  that the bond she shared with Cloudjumper was possible with her son and the Night Fury. She didn't know how she knew, but maybe it was because of the way they looked at one another, as though they were the same sides of a coin, the Night Fury might have appeared ready to kill her son with a plasma blast to the face, but Valka knew that her son wasn't in danger, the Night Fury was about to roar at him, frightening him certainly but not killing him.

"Go." She repeated again, gesturing towards the direction of Berk with her staff.

Hiccup continued staring at her.

The Night Fury glanced behind him, cocking a head towards the boy who had shot him down. When Valka had stopped shaking the staff, the relaxation in the dragon's form was gone instantly. The dragon roared at Hiccup, before he spread spread his massive wings and flew off, shrieking as he hit tree after tree in his desperate attempt to fly away.

Hiccup and Valka watched him fly off, the latter realizing with narrowed eyes that something was wrong with the dragon's flight, she would have to find that out later, right now her son was still watching her.

Valka wished that she could just fling off her mask and rush towards her son and envelop in a hug and never let go, but she couldn't. Hiccup didn't know who she was, who she had become, he wouldn't believe her, wouldn't trust her. She needed to gain his trust before she told him,  _if_  she told him.

"Uhh…" Hiccup finally remembered to speak, eyes still locked on the mysterious woman who had seemingly controlled a Night Fury with her staff, maybe even saving his life in the process.

Valka swirled her staff around in a wild arc before she slammed the curved staff against the ground, the rattles shaking wildly as the sound echoed throughout the silent forest. "You were never in danger," Valka couldn't help but tell her son, unable to hide the pride in her voice as she looked at Hiccup, who looked terribly confused. Her son hadn't killed the dragon when others, her own husband included, would have killed the gentle creature without hesitation.

"I… uh, what?" Came Hiccup's intelligent reply.

Valka smiled at him, though he couldn't see it. "He wasn't about to hurt you," she gestured towards the direction the Night Fury had fled. "He was to roar, to scare you, not kill you."

Hiccup stared at the mysterious woman whose face was hidden by a savage mask smeared with blue paint, he wanted to ask her who she was, what she had done, but he was paralyzed under her powerful gaze, he could only stare into the woman's mask with disbelief.

There was a sudden beating of wings above them, Hiccup looked up to see the massive form of a Stormcutter hovering above them, it's four wings beating in sync as one. He scrambled backwards, ready to yell to his mysterious savior to run away, but his cry fell on silent lips when he saw the woman raise her staff into the air, completely calm, and watched as the Stormcutter used it's massively, sharp claw to grip the hooked end of the woman's staff.

For a moment, mother and son stared at one another, the latter having no idea of their relationship, and then suddenly she was gone, carried through the air as she leaned against her staff and the Stormcutter calmly flew away towards the mountains.

Hiccup slowly got to his feet and turned around towards the direction of Berk, he took a single step forward but immediately collapsed onto the ground with a pitiful groan.

* * *

Valka sighed as she removed her mask, wiping away stray bits of hair that clung to her forehead. She glanced upwards at the night sky, looking at the shining stars with a ponderous expression. Cloudjumper hobbled towards her, crooning lowly as he butted his massive head against her, the silent question heard.

"I know, Cloudjumper. Believe me I know," Valka whispered to her greatest companion, stroking his blue-tinted chin lovingly, relaxing ever so slightly from his presence. "I shouldn't have shown myself… but I had too…"

Cloudjumper looked down at her, those owlish amber eyes glinting from the firelight, making them burn like miniature suns. He crooned again, soft and guttural.

"I know the Night Fury wouldn't have hurt my boy, but I just reacted. Before I knew it I was on the ground, I had to help him, Cloudjumper. You should have seen him, he looked terrified but…" She trailed off sadly as she remembered what else she had seen besides terror in her son's eyes, eyes that were mirrored like her own. "He was  _accepting_ , Cloudjumper. He was accepting death. I couldn't bare the sight." A lone tear dripped from her eye as she wondered what Hels her son had gone through to make him so accepting of death.

Cloudjumper butted her again, placing his head against hers reassuringly. He looked at her mournfully, as though he too felt the pain that was plunged in Valka's heart. Valka latched on to the Stormcutter, arms wrapped around his neck as she struggled to contain herself and her emotions, she clung to him as though he were a lifeline. His familiar scent calmed her ever so slightly, he smelled of smoke, cooked cod, and that odd musky scent that could only be from a dragon, he smelled like home.

"He's like I once was, do you know that?" Valka told him softly as she tenderly stroked his snout, forehead pressed against his scaled shoulder. "All these years he was all alone… an outcast…" She laughed bitterly, "And where was I?"

Cloudjumper pulled his head away from her reach and glanced down at her, silently probing a question, hurt evident in his eyes it made Valka's heart ache for being the cause of it. "No, Cloudjumper, no. I have never regretted staying with you at the Sanctuary, I never missed Berk and her people. I just wished Hiccup had been with me, where he could have been loved." She assured him with a voice tinged with sadness and regret at the last sentence.

Cloudjumper trilled softly, his neck frills spread out.

"I'm sure Stoick loves him, but chief Stoick? No, Hiccup is small and thin, when the heir must be strong. Stoick as a father might love him, but Stoick as the chief never could. Hiccup didn't kill that Night Fury, Cloudjumper, he let him go. No Viking would ever do such a thing. He's different, my boy." Valka said the last part sadly, though still proud.

She was proud of her son, for he had done what no other Viking had done –before her, of course- and that was letting a dragon go instead of killing it. She was so proud of him, proud of who he was. She was saddened however when she realized that whereas she was proud of her son and his actions, if the villagers, and even Stoick, ever found out that Hiccup had set free a Night Fury, an enemy, they would resent him even more.

The Vikings hated difference, abhorred it even. They were close-minded and stubborn at that, as they always had been even when it was herself being the social outcast instead of her son. Whenever she spoke her mind about dragons, that they could be dealt with in a peaceful way that didn't end with an axe in their gut. They had sneered and chuckled as though she were mad. They probably thought she was. They had looked at her with eyes full of loathing and rancor, eyes that had burned into her that not even the heat of dragon fire could ever hope to match it, eyes that haunted her childhood. Those same eyes that were now directed to her son.

Hiccup was different. She knew it the second she saw him, he was small where Vikings was massive, he was smart where Vikings weren't, he didn't kill a dragon when a Viking would have done so in a heartbeat.

Valka had never felt so proud in all her life. Her son hadn't killed a dragon, even when he had the perfect chance for recognition and attention. He could have killed that dragon and his life would have changed, because killing a dragon meant everything to Vikings, and if he had killed the Night Fury he wouldn't have to worry about those haunting eyes anymore. Hiccup had known that, he had known that if he killed that dragon, everything would get better, but yet he had let the dragon go. Even when everything he had learned and grew up in demanded that he kill the Night Fury, Hiccup had ignored it and did what was right.

_All these years, he took after me,_  Valka thought with a smile, unable to stop the glee from showing as she realized that her boy didn't take after his close-minded father, but instead his mother, though he had never truly known her.

"Yeh should have seen him, Cloudjumper. Yeh should have seen my boy," she said as she rubbed the Stormcutter's jaw with deft, light fingers. "He let the Night Fury go, he isn't a dragon killer… I don't think he knows what he is, but I know what he can become… He could be one of us."

Cloudjumper blinked at her words, warbling something out that nobody other than Valka would have understood.

"He doesn't know who he is, my dearest friend. All his life he has been surrounded by Vikings and their bloodthirsty ways, but if he were to meet someone different than them, someone just as different as he himself… we could guide him to a better future." Valka pondered her words, suddenly finding clarity as she imagined a beautiful, and maybe even possible, future.

A future where her son was at his mother's side, where he rightfully belonged. With a dragon of his own to love and cherish just like she loved Cloudjumper, her greatest friend.

She wanted that future so badly her whole soul seemed to ache in yearning. She wanted to be in her son's life, she wanted to be there for him. She wanted to be there to hold him when he cried, to whisper reassurances when he felt down, to kiss his temple and comb his shaggy, auburn hair. She wanted to be a mother again.

The only problem Valka saw was how her son would react when he learned who she truly was. Would he hate her for leaving him alone for all those years? Would he reject her? The thought of her own son hating her made tears form in the corners of her eyes. When she was still on Berk Valka had faced rejection on a daily basis by the majority of Berk, only Stoick, Gobber and Gothi the Elder had ever been truly kind to her. She had become so used to their rejection that it soon didn't hurt anymore, though those burning eyes still haunted her. Rejection had never bothered her after so many years of facing and having to deal with it on a daily basis. But if her son was to reject his mother? The thought terrified her.

Cloudjumper purred as he wrapped one of his secondary wings around his rider, enveloping her shivering form like a warm blanket. She felt the fears and insecurities that plagued her cease to exist under the presence of her friend. She placed her forehead against his chest, listening to the strong heartbeat that had always lulled her into a sense of safety. He was her greatest friend, they were two souls brought together to form into one.

Hiccup needed guidance, he needed a helping hand to show him the right path. Hiccup needed someone willing to listen to him and his troubles, someone willing to help him. Her son needed his mother. Because who else could help her son go through what she herself had gone through? That terrible feeling of loneliness… it was almost unbearable, if not for Stoick and his love Valka might have very well gone insane from all the heated glares and hateful whispers. Valka had had Stoick when she had been the receiver of those terrible glares, but Hiccup had no one.

_Well that is about to change,_  Valka thought to herself with determination, maternal fury seeping through her body in terrifying waves. _No one is ever going to hurt my baby boy again, not while I have something to say about it. Hiccup doesn't need those villagers who are too stuck in their barbaric, stubbornness ways. All he needs is his mother._

The last thought made her anger and fury slowly fade as dread sank it's claws into her heart. The fear of rejection had returned with greater strength. Would Hiccup even wish to know her when he realized who she was, or would he leave her just as she had left him for fifteen years? The thought was unbearable. Valka couldn't tell him the truth the next time she saw him, because she knew that he would reject her before she could have a say. Hiccup wouldn't understand why she had stayed away all these years until now. He wouldn't understand who she truly was, what she had become. But she was determined to try to help him understand, if only to regain a chance to be with her child.

"What am I to do, my friend?" She asked the Stormcutter. "How can I help my son without him knowing who I truly am?"

Cloudjumper blinked at her, his message heard despite the silence and Valka's heart sank.

He didn't know either.

"I guess we'll have to wait and see," Valka relented softly. "He's curious, far too curious for his own good." She smiled at that, for he had gotten that from her. "He'll be back, I know he will. He'll come back to the woods, for either myself or the Night Fury."

Hiccup would return, she knew it deep in her soul. Her son had seen the possibility of a whole way of life when she had 'saved' him from the Night Fury. He, who had been born and raised in such a violent village, saw for the first time a dragon and human together, coexisting peacefully instead of locked in mortal combat. He would realize that there were different ways of life outside of the one that abhorred him. He didn't know that he was destined for great things, he didn't know what plans his mother had for him.

Hiccup could never be a Viking and Valka knew that Hiccup knew that himself, because when he had lowered that knife away from the Night Fury's heart, he had forgone Viking tradition at it's very core. Seeing how isolated he was from the other villagers in Berk, it wouldn't be hard for Valka to sway her son into seeing thing reasonably.

Hiccup wouldn't become a Viking, not while his mother was around. Valka would show him a new way of life and thinking, she would shower her son with all the love and adoration she could muster within her, something that Hiccup had sorely been lacking in his life. She would gain his trust and when the time was right, reveal herself as his mother come back for the boy she had left in that cradle fifteen years ago. Hiccup wouldn't become a Viking.

He would become a dragon rider.


	3. The Cove

"Did you hear?"

"Useless…"

"Couldn't even fight off a Gronckle…"

"Always making things worse, I heard that the other children got hurt as well… he must be rubbing off on 'em…"

"Weakling…"

"I heard he ran… coward…"

Hiccup lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, as though to shield himself from the heated whispers and the glares full of rancor. His heart was still pounding from the battle with the Gronckle, if one could even call it a battle. More like a fiery massacre. He hadn't been the only one to lose, Snoutlout and the twins lost as well, but yet the villagers only saw him as the lone loser.

"How can a son of Stoick the Vast be so… so useless?"

"Probably couldn't even handle a Terror. His father squeezed one's head off when he was still suckling…"

"Can't even lift a hammer or swing an axe..."

"Not even a proper Viking…"

"He's always been different… He never was born right like the other children…"

Hiccup tried to ignore them, tried to ignore them and their horrible truths. But it was impossible, he was trapped, trapped as that Night Fury had been, but instead of ropes it was the expectations of his father and people, and did he fail ever so spectacularly.

"Doubt he could handle the sight of dragon blood… the same as his mother…."

At that whisper, Hiccup froze in place, eyes wide and heart pounding. He slowly turned around and hid behind a cart full of apples, the vendor nowhere in sight. He focused his attention of the one who had spoken, a rather large Viking man talking with Phelgma the Fierce, a Viking woman who had always resented Hiccup since he could first walk.

Phelgma seemed to agree with the Viking man, both of them unaware of their eavesdropper. "Aye, Valka never could handle the sight of spilt dragon blood. Couldn't stand any of the conflict, she was an odd one, just like her son."

Hiccup suddenly felt anger bubble within him, an emotion he had never really felt before. He usually only felt self-loathing and desperation, anger was new. He realized that he didn't like it when people insulted his mother, though he had never known her. But yet he didn't yell at them, not due to his cowardice, but because he was so desperate to know of the mother he had never known, his father never spoke of her and Gobber never told him anything, only that he looked like her.

The man nodded his head at the Viking woman's statement, rolling his eyes as he remembered the Chief's wife with open disdain. "She had always been weird, what with the way she went off about stopping the war with the dragons by being friendly to them, bah!" He spat on the ground, "Valka had a bleeding heart for those damned devils, and its no wonder Odin cursed her."

"You mean how she was killed by the very thing she was trying to save?" Phelgma the Fierce asked him; Hiccup felt his heart break just a little as he heard that. It hurt to know that his mother was killed doing something she believed right. It wasn't fair.

The Viking man snorted at that, "Hmph, no. Though now that I think of it, perhaps that was the way of the gods to get rid of her, killed by a dragon."

Hiccup bit down on his lips to prevent himself from screaming at them, his teeth bit through and blood crept into his mouth but he paid it no heed. He felt no pain, only a terrible rage that shook his frail form. Those people didn't know his mother at all! Odin would never have killed his mother like that, they were wrong!

"Than 'ow else did Odin curse her?" Phelgma the Fierce asked curiously.

"Why with that son 'o hers."

Hiccup clenched his hands into tightened fists; he bit down harder on his lip that drew more unnoticed blood. He had never felt so angry in his life, these people had no right to speak of his mother like that, and acting like he was some cursed burden.

 _You_   _are a burden,_  that tiny little voice in the back of his head that craved attention spoke up silently.  _You're a burden to Berk, to your father, to everyone. You're useless and weak and a coward, there's a reason you're called Hiccup the Useless._

The fierce Viking woman sighed wearily with a tone full of pity. "Aye. Poor chief, having to deal with that terrible nuisance all day and all night, he has never ever truly had a moment of respite. Before that runt of his was born, it was the boy's mother making trouble."

"Strange that he even married her in the first place. Valka, a damned dragon lover, and Stoick the Vast? By Thor, what a storm that caused… Stoick loved her, he truly did despite her unpopular opinions," the Viking man said as he stroked his beard thoughtfully. "It broke his heart when she died during that raid, eaten by the very things she was trying so hard to protect. No wonder she died so early, it was a foolish dream that would kill her, and it did."

Hiccup turned around to leave, unable to listen anymore. The thought of his mother hurt him deeply, knowing that he would never know her as she had died when he was a baby. Eaten by dragons, everyone would say behind Stoick's back. He began to head towards the woods, finding comfort with the isolation with only his thoughts for company. He tried to process what he had just heard from the two Viking warriors, his head all but spinning at the new information about his deceased mother.

His mother had been an outcast when she had been alive, just like he was now. His mother apparently loved dragons. Does that mean she would of approved or, by Odin, maybe even  _proud_  that Hiccup had released that Night Fury in the woods two days ago? He hoped so, he truly hoped so.

He leaned against a tree trunk and slid down to sit, hands draped around his knobby knees, lost in thought as he wondered what if would have been like, for maybe the hundredth time, if his mother was alive.

Would she have loved him despite his meager stature? Would she kiss the cuts and bruises from Snoutlout's rough tussling when he had been little, or rather littler? Would she have told him she loved him and that she was proud of him? His father had never said those words to him, not even once, all his father had given him was expectations he could never reach and that infamous disappointed scowl. Would she love him despite the fact he was everything that he shouldn't be?

He couldn't lift a hammer or swing an axe and he couldn't even throw a stupid bola.

One day, when Hiccup was young, his father told him to bang his head against a rock. He did it after a moment of hesitation, not because he wanted to but because he was terrified of disappointing his father yet again. So he smashed his head against the rock, nothing happened besides Hiccup gaining a terrible headache and a bloody and bruised forehead. His father had given him that same disappointed scowl again, which hurt even worse than the headache and bleeding forehead.

He wasn't a Viking, he was just Hiccup the Useless. The awkward, gangling son of Berk's greatest and strongest Viking, his father's greatest disappointment.

 _Mother... are you watching me now? Was I right in letting that Night Fury, an enemy, go?_  Hiccup thought as he looked upwards towards the heavens.  _Are you proud of me? Or are you just as ashamed of me as dad is?_

He remembered what Gobber had told him a few days prior _, "Now its not so much what you look like, it's what's inside that he can't stand…_   _Stop trying so hard to be something you're not._

 _I just want to be one of you guys,_  Hiccup thought to himself in a pitiful tone,  _I just want to be accepted. I just want a friend._

Hiccup had never had a friend before, nobody wanted to associate with the village outcast.

That dragon woman… She had saved him,  _him!_  Why? Why did she do that? Didn't she know who he was? The outcast of the Hairy Hooligan tribe, the most unViking Viking to ever live, the person who could literally make the terrible always happen. Why did she save him?

That thought stuck with him throughout dinner as he sat all alone, as usual, with only his meal to accompany him. He stared at the cooked cod, his appetite lost as he thought back to that moment in the woods. It seemed so surreal, he would have thought it a really lifelike dream, but the evidence was still there, his chest still hurt from the Night Fury's paw. It had been real, the dragon and the woman had been real.

Did she maybe… care about him?

Hiccup shook that hopeful and pitiful sounding thought out of his mind, nobody cared about him. Sure, people looked out for him, but that was more for his father than his actual wellbeing. He didn't have anyone who really cared, Gobber was always busy at the forge or training new Vikings -actual Vikings who weren't anything like Hiccup- and thus couldn't really be counted. His father was Stoick the Vast, the chieftain of Berk, who didn't have the time to deal with both his son's troublemaking ways and his people, much less having the time to actually care about his son, he doubted his father had ever asked him how his day was going in his entire life.

Only one person had ever truly cared about him, had truly loved him despite who he was. His mother. But she was dead, eaten by dragons, he would never see her again and would never know who she truly was. He didn't even remember her.

By Thor, that thought hurt more than an axe to the chest.

The dragon lady had taken down that Night Fury all by herself; she didn't even need a shield or an axe to do so. She had just used that odd staff of her and shook it, and the dragon immediately responded by calming down. She had probably saved his life when she had done it.

Hiccup was jealous of her, for she was of a same build as him though much taller, yet she managed to take down a Night Fury, the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death itself, with ease. Though maybe 'take down' wasn't the correct term for what she had done. It was amazing, the thing she did. The dragon  _listened_  to her. The dragon that had killed dozens of Vikings had been reduced to the lethal level of a curious housecat. It had relaxed in her presence, whereas in Hiccup's the dragon had nearly killed him.

He wished he could do that. To be strong instead of weak despite his small stature.

He wished that he wasn't useless. He wished that he wasn't small and frail when everyone else was massive and strong. He wished that he wasn't different. The dragon lady had saved his life, why did she do that?

Hiccup paused as he thought that as he looked down at his dinner with a revolted look, he didn't feel like eating. He pushed the cooling fish away from him and began to walk out of the Great Hall, passing past the scores of Vikings who feasted and laughed with one another as they told tales of their adventures with their multitude of friends.

Hiccup could safely say he had never done that. He had no friends, nor had he ever had one to begin with. His whole life, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third had been always alone.

Ostracized. Resented. Ignored. Excluded. Shunned. Disliked.  _Alone._

Loneliness… That was what he had always hated and what he was always terrified of. The prospect of being alone for the rest of his life terrified him. Ever since he could walk he had been different and he was shunned because of it. Hiccup didn't want to be alone anymore.

Alone… Hiccup had always been alone.

He had always been hated and resented by the large majority of the Berkians, but if Hiccup even had just  _one_  friend the boy would be content for the rest of his life. At least if he had someone to talk to, someone who would actually listen to him instead of waving him off, he could be happy.

The problem was that nobody on Berk liked him in the slightest.

All because he was small when he was supposed to be strong, smart where he was supposed to be average in intelligence, weak where he was supposed to be strong. Hiccup wasn't a Viking, he had never been a Viking. And because of that everyone ignored and hated him with a terrible bitterness that made Hiccup want to cry out at the unfairness of his unfixable and unchangeable situation.

But maybe… maybe he could change…

He couldn't kill dragons, he had realized that when he let the Night Fury go. But maybe he could take them down so the other Vikings could take care of them and give him the credit of taking them down instead of ruining everything like he normally did. The only problem was that the last time he had come face to face with a dragon, he had nearly died if the mysterious masked woman hadn't saved him in time.

 _If I can find that woman, I can ask her to train me._  He thought to himself as he hurried towards his home, the village was as silent as a grave yard, save for the occasional sound of sheep.  _She can teach me how to take down dragons without killing them._

Taking down a dragon itself would be a miracle for him. The villagers and his father would be so shocked that Hiccup,  _Hiccup_  of all people, had taken down a dragon, it didn't matter what kind as long it had scales and breathed fire, they wouldn't think of the no killing part. They wouldn't even believe the fact he had taken down a dragon for them to care about him refusing to kill one.

He couldn't kill a dragon. He wouldn't kill a dragon. He had tried to tell his father before he left on yet another pointless expedition to find the Nest, but his father had told him that he would learn the trade of his Viking ancestors, dragon slaying, and any protests had died when he saw there was no way out. He was trapped.

 _Maybe she can help me. I could become the son my father had always wanted, just a little on the small side._  Hiccup thought to himself with determination and a little optimism. _In my opinion, I think it's better to have more brains than muscles. I mean, just look at Snoutlout._

Granted he didn't have muscles like his cousin, and probably never will, but at least he wasn't a complete idiot, which Snoutlout was. If only brainpower actually helped him with his masculine and completely Viking cousin, usually Snoutlout would just shove him into the ground before he could even begin to think of a way out of it.

Hiccup felt a bit bad, as though he was being deceitful towards the woman who had saved his life. He was basically using her to further his goals to become a Viking, to become something that he wasn't, to become something that nobody saw as a nuisance or a pest. He just wanted to be one of them. Why couldn't anybody  _see_  that?  _It doesn't matter,_  he thought to himself with determination,  _I don't even know her. It's not like she cares about me, she probably just saved me out of pity._

Hiccup nodded his head at that, silently agreeing with himself on his belief that the masked woman didn't care about him. Why would she? She didn't even know him.

He stared at towards the woods wistfully; they had always been his escape from the village. He wondered if she was even still there, he doubted that the dragon lady lived on the Isle of Berk, people would have found out about her if she did. Would the Night Fury still be there?

Gobber said that all dragons always went for the kill, but the Night Fury hadn't. Granted he might have been about to kill him, but the lady said he was never in danger, that the dragon wouldn't have hurt him. He believed her too, for why would she have the need to lie to someone she doesn't even know?

He had to find her, that woman in the savagely painted mask with the odd sounding staff in her hand. He had to learn from her, if he could do what she did, maybe then he could find some small piece of acceptance from the villagers and his father.

Because at the end of the day, despite his many screw ups and sarcastic, bitter taunts that were secretly desperate cries for attention, all Hiccup had ever wanted was to be loved instead of rejected.

* * *

 

Valka found the Night Fury rather easily. She and Cloudjumper had flown over the forest searching for the elusive dragon at dusk, where few Vikings hunting in the massive woods would see them. It had taken them all but a couple of minutes once Valka and her dragon companion had returned to the spot where the Night Fury had crashed and where he had been released by Valka's son.

He had apparently trapped himself in a small cove nestled in Raven's Point, desperately clawing at the rock walls that confined him. His attempts at flight always ending in crashing, for Valka had instantly realized that the dragon's left tailfin was missing.

 _It must have been torn off during his crash,_  Valka thought mournfully, realizing that even if she and Cloudjumper got the midnight-scaled dragon out of his natural prison and back to the Sanctuary with the other dragons that she had rescued over the course of fifteen years, he would never be able to fly again.

It was just so unfair that such a beautiful and graceful creature would never fly through the clouds again, unless he were carried. He would forever be pinned to the ground, unable to feel that freedom of flying ever again. The Night Fury might well be the last of his kind, she loathed the idea of the elusive race being extinct after this one.

She loved dragons, and though he would be forever grounded, Valka would help in anyway that she could. He wasn't the first to be maimed, for there were several dragons back home who had been maimed by Drago Bludvist's cruel dragon traps. She would care for him, nurse him back to health as though he were her own child, and when he was ready, would carry him to the safety of her Alpha's care.

Cloudjumper landed at the top of the cove, his massively sharp claws digging into the rock as he looked down at the trapped dragon with narrowed eyes. The Night Fury stopped his desperate attempts of escape and instead opted to stare at the Stormcutter, his pupils mere thin slits that showed his agitation.

Valka vaulted off of Cloudjumper's back and slowly slid down the steep wall, her staff digging into the rock to slow her descent until she landed onto the ground safely.

The Night Fury growled at her menacingly, rounded teeth apparent to the former Viking woman. His slender body was tense and curled upwards threateningly. His massive wings spread up above him to make him appear larger, like most dragons did when they were afraid, angry or territorial. Valka could see the fear in his beautiful green eyes, the Night Fury knew that he couldn't fly, that he couldn't escape, but yet the dragon held his ground. Valka had to be proud of his bravery, though she was no threat.

She slowly crawled forward, dropping her staff and shield as she did so. She slowly approached the dragon on all fours, her movement so dragon like it would have unnerved anyone. The Night Fury raised his hackles, teeth shown and his tail tense and twitching ever so slightly, he was ready to defend himself from the human.

Valka still approached him slowly, completely unafraid though a bit cautious, and when she was close enough Valka raised her hand and slowly moved it around in a graceful pattern, watching as the Night Fury followed the movement with thin pupils. She suddenly brought her hand back down, clenching it into a loose fist, and the Night Fury rolled on his back, tongue lolling out as his teeth retracted and his pupils rapidly dilated and rounded.

She slowly caressed the dragon's belly, her touch as light as a feather. The Night Fury purred at her touch, his rounded pupils gazing up at her with apparent curiosity and no sense of fear.

Valka laughed lightly as she caressed the dragon's jawline, watching him close his eyes in contentment as she scratched at a patch of scales underneath his jaw, his tail thumped against the ground happily.

She slowly took off her mask, allowing the Night Fury to see her face.

The dark dragon stood on all fours, ears cocked backwards as he sniffed her curiously. She didn't smell like the Vikings, if anything she smelled of dragon, and she smelled familiar. She smelled faintly like the small human Viking that had let him go.

The Night Fury looked up at her, tongue lolling out of his mouth and showed his teeth in a dragonish smile. He guffawed out something, and Valka mimicked him by opening her mouth as wide as it could go.

"Ayaya," She mimicked him with large beam as the dragon mimicked her as well, his whole body began to contort slightly as he chortled in what could only be laughter.

Valka slowly lowered herself in a crouch, knees bent as she looked at the beautiful creature. "A Night Fury, right in front of me," she all but whispered in wonder, gazing at the elusive dragon with awe. She had never seen a Night Fury before despite fifteen years of living amongst dragons and exploring the world.  _He might very well be the last of his kind,_  Valka thought.

The dragon stared back, intelligent green eyes staring at her with rounded pupils. Valka slowly, ever so slowly, raised her right hand into the air; her palm and fingers spread outwards near the dragon. Valka looked at him right in the eyes, trying to tell him that it was all right, that he had nothing to fear from her.

He slowly lumbered closer, his gait almost feline as he crept forwards, head cocked to the side curiously as he stared at the palm. The dragon blinked slowly, dilated pupils staring at the appendage with curiousness. She held her breath as he slowly got closer and could only watch as the gentle creature slowly, almost hesitantly, pressed his snout against her palm.

She smiled at the dragon, recognizing the amount of trust that had been placed upon her by the dragon.  _Once you earn a dragon's trust, there is nothing they won't do for you,_  she thought to herself. She would use that to her advantage, she would use that trust to convince him to allow her and Cloudjumper to carry him to their home, the Sanctuary where they dwelled under their Alpha's rule and command. There was nothing here on Berk but an inevitable death; she would let no such thing happen to any dragon, especially to such an endangered dragon race. She swore she would save the dragons, and by Thor she would.

The Night Fury purred in contentment, his form practically vibrating from the force. Valka grinned as she stroked the beautiful dragon's face, curious fingers touching every scale that she could reach. The dragon rumbled out a low warble, pleased by her touch.

The dark dragon looked at her with bright green eyes with large pupils, rounded teeth shown by his curled lips. Suddenly the rounded teeth disappeared into his gums, making the dragon grin at her with a toothless smile.

"Retractable teeth," Valka exclaimed in glee as she gently grabbed the sides of the dragon's maw ands stuck her head into his mouth, starring at gums with a look of wonder. She had never seen a dragon capable of retracting ones teeth before. She removed her head from the mouth and eagerly stroked the dragon's snout, beaming as he leaned into her touch. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?" She asked him with a teasing smile, forehead pressed against his snout in a friendly manner.

The dragon grinned at her as his teeth appeared again. His long serpentine-like tail moved back and forth across the ground, scuffing up the dirt in his eagerness. It tore at Valka's heartstrings to see the missing left tailfin.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet," Valka told the dragon as she rubbed his snout, grinning like a fool when he purred at her touch.

She looked up towards where Cloudjumper watched on his perch, his amber eyes watching her protectively, she beckoned him down with a jerk of the head and watched as the proud four-winged dragon glided down to her and their newest companion.

The Night Fury tensed at the sudden arrival of the Stormcutter, his pupils thinning ever so slightly. Valka scratched that spot of scales under his chin, which made the jet black dragon relax at her touch.

"This is Cloudjumper," Valka gestured towards the Stormcutter, who stared downwards at the Night Fury with curiosity burning in his amber eyes.

Cloudjumper slowly hobbled to the Night Fury, who looked up at the much larger dragon with wide green eyes. The two dragons stared at one another, amber meeting green, an unspoken conversation seemed to happen between the two. Suddenly Cloudjumper leaned his massive head down to the Night Fury's eye-level. The Night Fury slowly leaned his head against Cloudjumper's own, his black forehead resting against Cloudjumper's scarred crown.

There was something so symbolic at the sight that it made Valka smile warmly. This is what she was meant to do. Protect and care for dragons. This poor beautiful creature was trapped in this natural prison, unable to fly away and escape. He would die if they didn't get him out of there and even then the wild wouldn't help him due to the Vikings of Berk. If the Vikings knew that a Night Fury was roaming their island with a missing tailfin that made flight impossible, hunting parties would be on this beautiful creature in a heartbeat. But she could protect this elusive Strike Class dragon when she gained enough of his trust to carry him back to the Sanctuary.

It wouldn't matter to their Alpha if he couldn't fly, as Valka's Alpha was a kind and generous ruler. Most Queens and even some Kings wouldn't want a crippled dragon in their Nest, for they couldn't hunt for themselves, but Valka's King was nothing of that sort. The white Bewilderbeast welcomed all dragons, no matter how crippled, into his home. He would surely welcome another addition to their growing numbers.

The Night Fury suddenly glanced at her, head perking up like an excited dog, before he bounded over to her as he rubbed his scaled form against her with a rumbling purr. She laughed as she felt something warm and wet against the entirely of her face, not at all perturbed or annoyed that the Night Fury had licked her. For dragons, licking was a form of conveying one's affections to another and it warmed Valka's heart to have gained the Night Fury's affections, and thus friendship, in such a short period of time.

"You're just a big softie, aren't ya?" She all but cooed at the supposed Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself, who warbled out something with a choky laugh.

The Night Fury leaned into her, nuzzling at her leather armor with a content warble. She gave the dragon a vigorous rubbing of the jawline, something all dragons she knew loved, and the Night Fury was no exception.

The elusive Strike Class dragon seemed to all but melt at her touch, rolling onto his back with his teeth retracted to show off his gummy smile.

Valka laughed as she began to pile a group of sticks into a neat bundle, luckily there were a lot of broken limbs in the cove from the Night Fury's attempts to escape. Cloudjumper spat out a small torrent of fire, immediately igniting the wood before he headed over towards the small pond with a curious purr.

The Night Fury bounded over to her, tongue lolling as Valka sat besides the fire. With a low croon, the Night Fury laid his head down on Valka's lap, purring when she scratched behind his ears.

Valka suddenly heard the sound of splashing water and turned around to see Cloudjumper remove his head from the small pond that was nestled in the middle of the cove, his mouth filled with fish. He slowly hobbled over to where his rider and the Night Fury rested, before he swallowed his meal contently.

She heard the low croons come from the Night Fury, reminiscent of a hatchling who wished to be fed. She felt his stomach rumble from where her hands were pressed against him. The dragon himself was staring up at Cloudjumper with watery green eyes, his pupils widen greatly, and the small downturn of his lips that showed his displeasure. He looked like a pleading hatchling, rather than what the Vikings believed was the Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself.

She realized that with his smaller form, it must be near impossible to fish for food than it would be for Cloudjumper, who had the advantage of his claws and larger head.

Cloudjumper stared down at him, refusing to be cowed by the pleading look the smaller and younger dragon was sending his way. With an agitated huff, Cloudjumper turned his head away, refusing to look at him.

Valka frowned at that, recognizing the situation.

"Cloudjumper…" She warned silently, like a mother scolding her troublemaking child.

The Stormcutter grumbled rebelliously, which made the former Viking glare at him.

He shuffled his body away from her, his massive scaled back facing her with his wings tucked in neatly, refusing to look her in the eye.

She leaned forward, eyes narrowed and face set in a permanent scowl that cowed even their Alpha. Cloudjumper tensed, sensing her glare burning into him. Slowly he turned his head around like an owl, his head now looking behind his back. He growled sadly when Valka continued to glare at him, head lowering slightly when he looked away, if anything the Stormcutter looked like a child who had been caught with a hand in the sweets jar.

She began to tap a finger against an armored plate on her shin. The Night Fury was watching the two with fascination, eyes wide and a slow dragonish smirk appearing as the elusive and rare dragon realized that Valka was on his side instead of Cloudjumper's.

Valka stayed silent, but anyone with common sense could see her displeasure in her pursed lips, narrowed brows and hands placed on her hips in loose fists.

With what could only be an irritated and exasperated huff, Cloudjumper's neck and mouth seemed to convolve. There were several moments where both woman and Night Fury watched as they heard the sounds of him hacking.

Cloudjumper regurgitated half of his catch and spat it on the ground, the fish themselves were coated in slimly slobber and bile.

The Night Fury didn't seem to mind as he sprang to his feet and eagerly slurped the pile of fish, slobber and all, with enthusiastic speed. When he finished his meal, the Night Fury gave the former Viking woman a wide gummy smile with his tongue lolling out. With a toothy grin that looked almost sheepish, Cloudjumper crawled over to his rider, whose frown had disappeared and was instead replaced with a warm smile.

With a laugh Valka looked at her dragon companion of fifteen years who nuzzled her lovingly, purring contently when she scratched the plate the divided his face and forehead. "Was that so hard?" She crooned out tenderly, chuckling when Cloudjumper nuzzled her again with equal tenderness.

The Night Fury slowly crept up to the larger dragon, almost playfully as the jet black dragon rubbed himself against the Stormcutter's body, reminiscent of a content cat. Cloudjumper looked down at the Night Fury with what could only be a smile and slowly nudged the dragon with his massive head in a friendly manner.

Valka watched the interaction with a beam, enjoying how the two dragons interacted.  _They will be goods friends for sure,_  she thought to herself.

Cloudjumper suddenly tensed, his head suddenly titling around his shoulders until he faced the direction behind him. The Night Fury tensed as well, his body coiled like a snake about to strike.

Valka immediately knew that the two dragons sensed something. She leapt to her feet and grabbed her mask and quickly put it on before grabbing her staff and shield that lay against a boulder. She barely had time to face whatever danger her beloved dragon companion and their newest dragon companion sensed, when she saw a head peak into the cove from a crevice.

She lowered her staff ever so slightly, for she instantly recognized her son peeking into the cove.

Hiccup tried to hide behind the rock wall, though he was terribly aware that he was just about as good at hiding as he was at killing dragons. Sighing at the realization the woman had seen him; Hiccup slowly emerged from the crevice. He stared at the beautiful natural cove with wonder before focusing on the strange woman and the two dragons that were staring up at him curiously.

Swallowing back his nervousness, Hiccup slowly headed towards the woman with determination.

"I need to talk to you," he told the woman, trying to sound brave and manly like his father when in reality he was all but trembling at the woman who without a word could control dragons.

Valka smiled beneath her mask and sat down crossed legged as she leaned against Cloudjumper's side. She gestured towards the small fire for him to sit, "I knew you would come." She informed him as her son cautiously sat down on the other side of the fire, nervously glancing at the massive Stormcutter who was curled around her protectively and to the Night Fury that looked at him with narrowed eyes from the woman's lap.

"You have questions," the woman stated. The firelight gleamed off of her mask; Hiccup wished he knew what she looked like, the mask made her seem inhuman, more dragon than human.

Hiccup nodded shyly, still in awe of how comfortable the woman was with two of the most dangerous of dragons by her side. She was even using one as a  _pillow,_  and the Stormcutter didn't seem to mind in the slightest, if anything it looked content. Even the Night Fury was laying it's head on the woman's lap like content dog looking for a good scratch. It was unnerving, to see dragons completely at ease with a human when Hiccup had seen so much death and fighting in Berk between the two species.

"Then ask your questions, young Viking." Valka noticed how her son flinched at the last word; she decided to remember that for later. "We have much to discuss."


	4. Searching for the Nest

The sea was calm, the waves gently lapping against the armada of Viking ships that proudly sailed towards the uncharted waters that belonged to the dragons. The leading ship had a sail with the sigil of two swords impaled through the body of a monstrous red dragon. Another held the image of a red-haired Viking with a thick beard. The last held the image of another red dragon twisted around the sail with blood seeping through it's wounds. They had been sailing for several days, and aside from a random Scauldron attack, their voyage had been uneventful.

Stoick the Vast, Chieftain of Berk, stood at the prow of his ship that led the armada, a total of three Viking warships filled to the brim with Vikings and weaponry. His cold brown eyes scanning for any possible signs of danger, his hand never straying too far from his axe. The sea was lifeless, no birds flew above them nor did fish swim below them.

He didn't blame them, for no sentient living being would be foolish enough to live between the border of man and dragon.

The fog that divided Stoick and his Viking warriors from their most hated enemy loomed before them. A wall of thick mist that looked like billowing smoke. It's sickly grey color reminiscent of decaying flesh. Stoick tried to see through it, but it was impossible. The fog lingered before them, the silence unnerving, as though they were sailing straight for the gates of Helheim, the gates of hell. They were, in a sense.

He stared into the fog, unafraid of the hidden dangers that dwelled within. He had traveled through the fog before countless times, hoping for the gods to bless him with a safe voyage to finally end the dragon threat, but so far all he had gained from those trips were scars, burns and the faces of the dead who had fought with him in those ambushes and fell to the beasts.

So many of his people had died in that fog, the dividing border between two worlds. One a world of man and the other a land of savage demons. Ships only rarely ever returned, their passengers often killed by those that they hunted. Only a few ships returned to Berk, and even then the ship was all but ready to collapse upon itself. The people who returned were always few and far between, so many had been killed by dragons, so many loved ones lost, so many lives snuffed out by those demons of the skies.

They were in there; Stoick could feel it in his bones. Those monsters dwelled within the fog's deathly embrace, well protected by the thick, curling fog that reminded Stoick of the countless fires that had burned Berk, and the smoke that followed. Sometimes, if he looked hard enough, he swore he could see the faint outline of his own house, burning.

 _Fifteen years…_ Stoick thought with a heart as heavy as he was.  _Odin, why did you take her away from me? From our son?_

Valka... Fifteen years had passed since she was snatched by that Thor damned Stormcutter, a demon amongst devils, taken from this world far too early. He had loved her more than anything in the world. Fifteen years had passed, yet Stoick didn't go a day without thinking of her. Whenever the spring breeze blew, he would close his eyes and think it Valka caressing his cheek. Whenever a dragon raid happened, he thought of her death, how she was snatched from him by that devil. Whenever he saw his son, all Stoick saw was his mother in Hiccup's features, the tilt of his chin, the auburn hair, eyes the deepest of green. By Thor he even scowled like her, thin brows narrowed and eyes glinting dangerously though Valka had perfected the art of intimidation despite her small stature whilst Hiccup couldn't even scare a child. Hiccup took after his mother, and Valka didn't leave that much room left for himself. It hurt, to see his dead wife in his son.

 _Not a day goes by where I don't think of you,_  Stoick thought to his wife's ghost as he stared out towards the fog and the Nest that housed those wretched beasts that had killed her and hundreds of his people.  _I will avenge you, Valka. I swear it. By the gods, I will have my vengeance, my sweet Val… Soon, when I find that Nest, I will kill the Stormcutter that took you from Hiccup and I. I will finally give you peace by killing your murderer._

He would find the Nest, he would break it down with his bare hands if he had too. He would kill every dragon he saw, and if he happened to chance upon a Stormcutter, he would gladly end its life as slowly and painfully as possible. The dragons had taken away Valka from him. He would take their lives as repayment. And when he found the devil that had killed his wife, he would proudly nail its monstrous head on his mantle for the world to see that Stoick had finally avenged his beloved.

His younger brother walked up towards him, standing behind him at a respectful distance. "We're ready," Spitelout said gravely as he also stared out into the swirling fog with eyes as cold as Stoick's. He too knew what dwelled within those billowing mists, he knew the dangers and most of all he knew that the Nest lay beyond them, waiting to be found at long last after six generations of futile searching.

"Good," Stoick said with a voice like thunder.

He continued to stare out towards the fog that hid his target from him. If he found Helheim's Gate, what would he find? Would he find the bones of his wife littering the floor? Why were the gods so cruel? They had taken his wife from him, leaving him with an infant son and no idea of how to care for him.  _Foolish woman,_  he thought as he felt tears threaten to leak from his eyes.  _You were so foolish, Val… Trustin' dragons… I always thought it would kill you one day… how I wished I was wrong._

He would avenge her, he would avenge the woman he loved even if it killed him. He could still remember the day he had fallen for her, the village outcast who couldn't stand the sight of dragon blood. She had a temper as fiery as dragon fire whenever confronted and mocked for her ideals, he could still remember Valka socking Mildew in the jaw when he made some bitter comment about her, knocking him flat on his arse with a broken jaw, he and Gobber had been laughing for days after that that incident. Even now the memory made him smile softly, if only a little wistfully at the thought of happier, easier times when Valka was still alive.

He fell in love with her, despite being himself and Valka being herself. They were complete and utter opposites, yet somehow completed the other. He was rash and bold whereas she was calm and collected. He thirsted for the blood of dragons whilst she preached of peace with the beasts. They were as different as night and day, but they loved one another with a passion that burned as strong as the sun.

That fiery love still burned within him, having never died out even when she was eaten by dragons fifteen years ago. He never took another wife, though many people expected him to, he wouldn't betray Valka in such a way. He loved her and only her. Even if Odin himself barred him from the great halls of Valhalla for not taking another wife, Stoick wouldn't have regretted it in the slightest. He had loved Valka; there could be nobody else  _but_  Valka.

"Take us in," he told Mulch, who quickly aimed the Viking warship towards the fog.

They slipped into the ghostly fog, the cold moisture clung to Stoick's fiery red mane but he gave it no heed, for all he cared about was the devils that dwelled within the fog, waiting for them. He heard the soft chitters and growls of dragons hidden in the thick fog. Devils hidden in the darkness.

While some Vikings shifted on their feet and handled their weapons with nervousness, small traces of fear in their eyes, Stoick felt nothing of the sort. He never felt fear, for fear had burned itself out of him during that raid, when he was terrified for the lives of his son and wife. It was fear that made him choose between his wife and son, when he should have just buried his axe into the Stormcutter's neck and ended it there. But the flames that enveloped his son's nursery with a hungry greed couldn't have been ignored, he was afraid of losing his son and thus he didn't do what a chieftain should have done, kill the threat, and let his fear guide him to save his son.

He didn't regret rushing towards his boy; he loved Hiccup more than anything, though he didn't show it very well. Stoick only regretted letting that fear guide him, or rather control him, on that fateful night. If he had thought more clearly, maybe Valka wouldn't have died due to his carelessness. He should have realized that in those short moments, when he told her to hold on, that she wouldn't have even attempted to defend herself from the devil, for she didn't see the dragon as that, but as something that could be reasoned with. Fear had burned out of him that night, just as the fire had burned out Hiccup's nursery. He didn't feel fear anymore, the last time he had felt it was watching his wife being carried away in the Stormcutter's claws with Hiccup nestled in his arms screaming into the night. He had lost his wife that night, and Hiccup had lost his mother. Stoick honestly doubted he could ever feel fear again, not since that night.

All he felt now was duty. That alone kept him going, when all Stoick wished to do was break down and mourn for the woman he loved, taken from him far too soon.

A chief protects his own. His first duty is to his people _._

Even though he wished he could break down and just cry at the injustice of it all, he couldn't because Stoick had the duty to look after his people. He couldn't just be Stoick, a widower and father. He had to be Stoick the Vast, the chief who felt no fear, the chief who would protect them all, the chief who would save them from the dragons.

 _This is for you, Val._  Stoick thought to himself as he gently pressed a hand against his helmet to straighten it and the other tightened around his trusty axe. She might be dead, but one day they would reunite in the halls of Valhalla and be together for all eternity. But for now, he must stay in the land of the living, for his duty to his people held him from reuniting with his beloved, departed wife. He would be the one to end the dragon threat, he would end the raids so no other loved ones would be taken, he would avenge those lost over the years. But most of all, he would avenge Valka.

And when dragons ambushed the ships, fire and flames raining down upon them as the devils attacked the Viking ships with animalistic, savage fury, Stoick felt nothing. He only did what he was best at, moving as though possessed by some spirit that guided him and his axe into the flesh of dragon. As he fought for his life, axe dripping with blood from his defeated foes, Stoick swore he heard the wind whistle a familiar, eerie tune. He closed his eyes tightly, the darkness in his eyes often flashing red from the fires erupting from dragon maws. Stoick could feel tears threatening to spill. He might not feel fear anymore, but he still felt that terrible pain in his heart. It had broken that night, his strong and mighty heart, when Valka was killed.

The wind continued to whistle in his ears, somehow heard despite the raucous cacophony of war cries and savage roars sounded by man and dragon alike. Stoick wept bitterly, tears hidden in the shadows of the fog.

Why did that song haunt him so? It was their song, a song of love that was once a way of conveying their beautiful love to one another. Now it was only a bitter reminder of a beautiful past that could never be relived except in his dreams, because when he awoke Stoick found himself trapped in a dark present.

And so, despite the terrible pain that it caused, Stoick began to whistle as well as the Viking chieftain of Berk fought for his very life, axe gleaming in the torchlight and slick with dragon blood. He whistled as he dealt deathblow after deathblow, severing Nadder heads in one strong stroke, gutting Gronckles that flew too close, stabbing Hideous Zipplebacks in their wretched hearts, killing anything and everything that had wings or scales. He whistled as he wept, the hot tears hidden underneath his shaggy beard.

_I'll swim and sail on savage seas…_

_With ne'er a fear of drowning…_

_And gladly ride the waves of life…_

_If you will marry me…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, how did you like Stoick's POV? I personally love Stoick, he's one of my favorite characters in this universe, and I really wanted to write him in this. A large majority of the chapters will be in Hiccup or Valka's POVs, so I really wanted to mix it up a little. I decided to write this for a reason, which was to remind people that this isn't second movie Stoick, but first movie Stoick who doesn't know how to positively interact with his son.
> 
> Stoick is one of my favorite characters abut that doesn't mean he's safe from criticism about his parenting methods. We all know that Stoick loves Hiccup, the second movie showed us how much, but in the first movie we never really see Stoick and Hiccup being close until the very end of the movie. I'm assuming that their relationship, while somewhat amiable, is mostly distant due to Stoick's responsibilities as chief and also because of Hiccup's lack of skill in anything considered important for a Viking. This does not mean that Stoick doesn't love his son; it's just that he can't properly show that fatherly love when Hiccup is a disappointing heir in Viking eyes. He's chief first and a father later.
> 
> So I wrote this chapter, not only to further the plot, but to also help you, the readers, understand that while Stoick is a loving husband and father, he doesn't know how to show it and that makes him distant. I want you guys to know that Stoick is never the 'bad guy' in this fic.


	5. Who Are You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup tries to get some answers out of the mysterious dragon lady.

Hiccup tried to speak, but it felt like his tongue was glued to the bridge of his mouth. He still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that those dragons were so content to be touched by the woman, like tame cats instead of fiery beasts that had raided Hiccup's village for six generations.

"Who are you?" He finally managed to ask, suddenly feeling shy as he looked at her.

The woman in the mask tilted her head at that, as though pondering on what to say. "I am nobody of importance," she said to him, wishing that she could tell him who she truly was but unable to. If she told him right now, she wouldn't know how he would react. He might very well storm off and never return and Valka didn't want that. She wanted to be with her son, to know who he was. She wouldn't leave him ever again.

Hiccup snorted at that, "So I should just call you dragon lady?" he asked dryly with his normal sense of sarcastic humor.

The woman shrugged, "If you wish."

Hiccup glanced at the Stormcutter and Night Fury; Valka could see the small traces of fear in his eyes. It made sense, her son had lived in a world that had been the subject of dragon raids since before either of them had been born, of course he would fear them. She could still remember, before Cloudjumper had taken her away, that she had fashioned a small stuffed dragon for her son, who had been positively terrified of the toy and couldn't sleep for a week. Living on Berk with it's inhabitants would make anyone, especially a child, be sour towards dragons but Valka held faith in her son.

"They won't hurt you, Hiccup." She told him softly, trying to let him understand that the dragons behind her weren't monsters, but beautiful and gentle creatures.

Hiccup didn't look convinced in the slightest, "Are you sure because my head was nearly blown off by a Gronckle today-" He stopped suddenly, staring at her with narrowed eyes. "How… How do you know my name?"

Valka inwardly cursed herself for her small slipup, "I know who you are, son of Stoick the Vast." She told him finally, using the fact that Hiccup was Stoick's heir, no matter what those villagers saw, and that that information wasn't exactly unknown to others outside of Berk.

Hiccup seemed to deflate at those words, oddly enough he looked disappointed. "Oh…"

 _He doesn't like to be reminded of his father, or perhaps to be compared to his father,_  Valka realized with a small frown. She remembered the night she arrived on Berk, how distant her husband was to her son.  _Odin's ghost, what else have I missed in my son's life? Stoick… why is Hiccup like this? So scared and terrified of being ignored, I can see it in his eyes, he has no confidence in himself._  Her heart sank as Valka thought of this, she stared at her son with teary eyes hidden behind her mask. _My little boy…_

"Why did you save me from him," Hiccup jerked his head in the direction of the Night Fury, who was staring at him with unblinking eyes.

 _Because I'm your mother, I will always protect you._  Valka thought to herself sadly. Hiccup couldn't know who she was, maybe in time but for now she was just some dragon lady he had found in the woods. "You let him go, Hiccup." She rubbed the Night Fury's jaw, who purred in contentment at the touch. "You're a Viking, but you let him go."

Hiccup looked away from her, his eyes closed as though pained. "I'm not a Viking," he said softly.

"No, you're not," Valka agreed with him. There was a moment of silence before she spoke again, "You're greater than a Viking."

Hiccup swung his head over to look at her, green eyes wide in shock at the compliment. Nobody, and Hiccup meant  _nobody,_  had ever complimented him before on not being a Viking, all of the villagers just sneered and whispered behind his back when he walked by, as though he couldn't hear them. Not even Gobber or his father had ever told him that he, Hiccup the Useless, was great. He felt something warm bubble within him, it took him a second to realize it was happiness.

"How?"

Valka leaned forward, the firelight gleaming off of her mask that honestly terrified the small boy, it was like looking into the face of some monstrous dragon. "You saved his life, Hiccup. You let him go. A Viking would never do that, they would have killed this beautiful creature in a heartbeat. Vikings believe that killing a dragon makes them strong, but in reality doing what is right is what makes a person strong. You're stronger than you think, Hiccup Haddock. Far stronger than you will ever know."

Hiccup didn't look convinced.

"Tell me, why did you let him go?" Valka asked her son, wishing to know why he had done so. He could have easily left the dragon in the ropes and run back to the village and forget the whole thing had happened, but yet he himself had cut the ropes that he had placed on the dragon.

"I couldn't kill him." Hiccup said softly as he gazed into the fire, thin arms draped tightly around his knobby knees.

"Couldn't or wouldn't?"

 _Hiccup, you must understand what you've done. You have the gift that bonds us, the gift of dragons. You just don't realize it yet, but I will make sure you will,_  Valka thought to her son with determination.

"I was a coward. I was weak. I wouldn't kill a dragon!" Hiccup listed off what was wrong with him with an angry wave of the arms.

The mysterious woman leaned closer, "You said wouldn't that time." She pointed out.

Irritation erupted within him suddenly, he was so tired of being asked why he was so different, so he lashed out towards the woman, "Okay, whatever. I  _wouldn't._  Three hundred years and I'm the first Viking who wouldn't kill a dragon!" Hiccup hadn't noticed that he had stood up as he spoke, turning his back to his mysterious savior as he did so, he didn't want her to see the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes. He spoke so softly Valka had to strain her ears to hear him speak. "I didn't let that dragon go because I was strong, I did it because I was  _weak_."

For a moment the only sound was the crackling fire and the breathing of the dragons.

And then the dragon woman Hiccup had met in the woods spoke.

"You're not the first Viking who wouldn't kill a dragon, Hiccup." Her voice was so soft, merely above a whisper. Hiccup turned around to glance at her, the woman was looking at the Stormcutter, a hand placed on his snout and masked eyes gazing up into the amber eyes of the Stormcutter. "I was."

Hiccup blinked at that, shock apparent by his wide eyes. "Y-You're a  _Viking_?" He hadn't ever thought of her to be a Viking. Vikings were huge and massive people, but she was small and thin, like himself. She seemed to love and care for dragons whilst Vikings killed and hated them. It just seemed impossible for this dragon loving lady to share the same blood as himself, the blood of Vikings.

"I  _was_  a Viking." The woman amended. "A long time ago… I was born in a village, just like Berk, that was constantly raided by dragons… It was a land of kill or be killed. I was ostracized by my people, all because I wished for peace with dragons instead of killing them. I believed peace between the humans and dragons was possible." She then chuckled sadly, "It was a very unpopular opinion."

Hiccup could see why, if her people were like Berk's people, than she really must have been an outcast, like himself. He wondered what his father would think if he said the same thing, that peace could happen between man and dragon. His father would laugh at him, Stoick the Vast didn't believe in peace, none of the Vikings did, all they believed in was war. She was everything a Viking was not.

She was just like him.

The thought made him dizzy, the breath literally knocked from his frail form at the thought of another outcast who couldn't, wouldn't, kill dragons. The thought that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't so alone made him want to cry.

"And then one night, during a dragon raid… I saw a dragon break into my home, into my infant son's nursery…" the woman tensed as she said this, as though unsure on how to continue, Hiccup listened with rapt attention, eager to learn more about this woman. "I rushed to protect him, I was even prepared to kill the dragon if it meant to protect my son, it would have torn my soul apart to have done so, but a mother would do anything for her child." Valka glanced up at her son, who was watching with rapt attention, hanging on to her every word. "But what I saw was proof. I saw the dragon,  _this_  dragon," she petted Cloudjumper's snout tenderly, "not attacking my child, but playing with him. He was rocking my son's cradle, as curious of the babe as my son was of him. It was there and then when I realized that I had been right all along, that peace was possible between dragon and Viking… but I was wrong." Hiccup tensed at that, looking up at her with wide eyes.

"When I saw Cloudjumper for the first time, I didn't see a monster. All I saw was a gentle, intelligent creature whose soul reflected my own." The woman continued to stroke Cloudjumper's scarred crown, the dragon's eyes were closed as he purred his contentment. "But just as I was about to approach him, my Viking husband appeared with an axe in hand." She sighed wearily as she remembered that night when Stoick appeared, ready to kill Cloudjumper. "He attacked Cloudjumper, most likely thinking he that he was trying to kill me and our son. He didn't stop to see the gentle creature that I saw, all he saw was a monster." She sounded so mournful that Hiccup wished to comfort her. "He attacked him, grazing his crown with his axe," she stroked the scar on Cloudjumper's crown with shaky fingers, the constant reminder that Vikings couldn't change, that her beloved husband couldn't change. "Cloudjumper took me away from my home that night, away from my husband… and… and away from my son." She chocked that last word out, her voice shaky and filled with sorrow and pain. "Cloudjumper never meant to harm me, he just thought that I belonged with him."

"Why are you telling me this?" Hiccup asked her softly, trying to see past the fearsome mask that hide his savior's face from him, the firelight flickered against the blue paint and seemed to gleam in the darkness.

"Because I trust you."

"Why? You don't even know me."

 _I know you more than you think, my son._  Valka thought to herself, her heart pained that she couldn't reveal who she truly was to him. She might not be able to be his mother at the moment, but she could still become his friend and confidant.

She doubted that it would be hard to earn her son's trust and companionship. From what she had seen her child had no friends and nobody to talk to. His own people ostracized him, they shied away from him because they couldn't stand who he truly was. Vikings hated difference and Hiccup was about as different as one could get. If she continued to talk to him and listen to him speak, Hiccup would latch onto her and what she had to give, all the love in the world. A mother's love. Hiccup didn't have anyone else, his father was gone most of the time due to his duties as chief and even then Stoick most likely never had time for him. From what Valka had seen the night of the raid a few days prior, none of her son's age mates could stand to be in Hiccup's presence, much less talk to him. Valka could use this to get closer to her son, though she felt terrible doing so, using her son's isolation and status as a social stigma to her advantage.

Hiccup had never had anyone truly care about him, Valka knew just by looking at that desperate longing for companionship in her son's eye. She too had once had that look in her eye, until she found a companion in Stoick and then later on Cloudjumper. Hiccup yearned to find any sort of acceptance of who he was. He wouldn't find that on Berk, but he would find it with her.

When he realized that she was really the only one who didn't judge his differences, but rather welcomed it, he would return to the cove for longer periods of time, if only to feel that sense of companionship he was searching for. When he stayed longer, Valka would gain his trust and friendship and maybe even teach him a few things about dragons. He would slowly start to trust her, maybe even viewing her as a kindred spirit as he now knew that she had been an outcast at her own village when she was young, he just didn't know that it was Berk. Hiccup would see the similarities that she shared with him, the similarities that bonded them, and see that he wasn't alone, not anymore.

Stoick wasn't there to bring down his confidence and self-esteem, though she knew her husband didn't mean to do so, it was just that his expectations were for somebody that just wasn't Hiccup. She would build up her son's confidence that had been knocked down by the shortsighted villagers and help guide him into who he was meant to be.

Stoick wanted a strong son with beefy arms, a sturdy build and a bloodlust for dragon blood. He might love his son, Valka knew he did, but a chief of Berk could never love Hiccup, a small little boy with skinny arms, a frail build and a disgust for spilt dragon blood. Valka loved Hiccup for just being Hiccup.

She didn't care in the slightest that her son was on the smaller side, if anything he had taken after her in terms of build, Valka loved her son and who he truly was. She wouldn't force her expectations on her son, she wouldn't pressure him into becoming something he might not even want to be like Stoick was most likely doing, but she would be happy to give her son a guiding hand. A true parent guided their children into their destinies, they didn't force them like many Vikings did to their children by shoving axes and swords in their hands when they were children.

Valka knew that she wasn't the best of mothers, if anything she considered herself to be a terrible mother for leaving Hiccup alone for so long, but at least she knew it and accepted it. She knew this, despite the pain that the realization brought, and strove to correct the mistake she had made fifteen years ago when she had sworn to never return to Berk and the family she had left behind. She wanted to be Hiccup's mother, a true mother who was there for her son. She wanted to help her son discover who he was, she wanted to guide him into a better future for him. A future where he wasn't forced to become a Viking by his father and peers, but able to choose his own path.

 _He may have a gentle heart, but he has the soul of a dragon,_  Valka thought as she looked at her son. She could already envision a future where she flew on Cloudjumper with her son at her side, flying on his own bonded dragon. She wanted her son to bond with the Night Fury; she knew that it was possible that they could have the same beautiful bond she shared with Cloudjumper. The bond she and the Stormcutter share was something so beautiful that she wanted her own son to experience it. The only way to describe it was that two souls connected to form one. The only problem was that the Night Fury was forever grounded; Hiccup could never fly with him. But she knew that while the Night Fury didn't fully trust her son, and she didn't doubt that Hiccup was still afraid of the dragon if only slightly, they had more than enough time to help guide them into a beautiful friendship. She knew it could be done, that her son and the Night Fury could form a similar bond, she had faith in them.

And… when she was ready and when Hiccup himself was ready to know the truth, Valka would finally tell her son the truth, that she was his mother.

Valka wanted to be in her son's life, she didn't want to return to her home without knowing if he was safe or happy.  _Maybe… maybe if I can show him everything that Vikings know about dragons is wrong, when I tell him that I'm his mother and he accepts me instead of hating me for leaving him for all those years… I can convince him to leave Berk and be where he truly belongs, at his mother's side._

Valka wanted that future so badly it hurt. Hiccup was well on his way into becoming a dragon rider, he had the mentality to be one, he just needed to gain the Night Fury's trust first.

"Who are you?" He whispered to her again, wanting to know her name so badly it nearly hurt. He was curious by nature, far too curious for his own good really, but he wanted to know more about this mysterious woman before him who was more like him than he had first realized.

She didn't speak for a moment as though she was conflicted on what to say. And then her hands slowly trailed up towards the side of her savagely painted mask, slender fingers gripped around the hardened leather tightly. Hiccup leaned closer, mesmerized at the action. He watched as the mask was slowly raised, he saw a sharp chin, a slender nose that curved ever so slightly, eyes the color of the deepest of emeralds that stared into him with such power and wisdom it made him tense under her piercing look, auburn hair lowered unto her shoulders in three carefully woven braids.

She was beautiful, in a rough and outlandish way.

"My name is of no concern," she said, repeating herself like last time. "Only know that I've been watching you, Hiccup. I saw you during the last raid, I saw how your own people treated you as though you were a plague," her face seemed to crumple in weary resignation, the slight wrinkles around her eyes showing pain that made the boy wish to comfort her. "It reminded me of myself." She blinked at him, those striking emerald eyes cutting into him. "You remind me of myself, before I was taken by the dragons."

Hiccup stared at the woman, trying to make sense of everything she had told him. It was hard to wrap his head around the idea of another outcast like himself had existed, someone who was different and couldn't help it. Someone who wouldn't kill a dragon. He found comfort at that, as though some great burdened had been lifted from him, he didn't feel so alone anymore.

"What happened? After the dragons took you?"

She smiled at that question as she looked at the massive Stormcutter seated besides her, "Oh Cloudjumper never meant to harm me, he must have thought that I belonged with him. He took me back to his home, his Nest, and that has been my home for countless years." She stroked Cloudjumper lovingly as she said this, listening to his rumbling purrs with a chuckle before her face fell again, eyes suddenly so downcast it hurt to see someone so sad and full of regret.

The woman looked away from him, gazing into the firelight with teary eyes though no tears fell. "I never returned, not even to see the child I had left behind that night. He and his father nearly died that night, all because I couldn't kill a dragon… I thought that…" she swallowed heavily in both grief and regret, "That if I stayed away and let them think I died that night, I could protect them. If I stayed, I would only endanger my family due to my beliefs. I thought that if I stayed away, my son would be better off without me." She then looked at Hiccup, eyes locking into his with a look so strong it made him breathless. "A mother would do anything for her child… even if that means to not be there for him. For years I tried to forget of the son I had left, still in his cradle…" she looked at the small teenaged boy with a certain sweet bitterness in her eyes, "… But a mother never forgets."

Hiccup had never felt so terrible for another person in all his life. Usually all the pity was directed towards himself and his horrible ostracized life, but the woman's story struck at him deeply. He could tell that the dragon lady seated before him truly did regret never seeing her child ever again, even though she knew she was protecting him by staying away. Maybe because he had never had a mother to love him, maybe he felt he could relate to this woman and the son she had to leave behind.

"Do you know if your son survived the raid?" He asked her, trying to find words as he looked into her haunted eyes. There was something familiar about those eyes, that same look of haunting that plagued her, it was as though he was seeing himself within this woman just like he had seen in the Night Fury watching him from across the fire.

The woman's smile seemed to sweeten, less bitter and bit more happier now, as she thought of his question. "I suppose he did," she said softly, looking back at the firelight with a furrow of her brows. "He's probably forgotten me…" she smiled sadly, eyes full of wistfulness as she looked back at the boy seated before her. "It's not like I was there for it to be any different."

He wanted to comfort the woman, he didn't know why but he knew that this woman had never told anyone her story before. She had told him something very personal about herself, as though she trusted Hiccup with this information.

 _She said that she trusted you,_  a small part of Hiccup reminded himself softly.  _She's probably never told anyone this story before you._

There was something about that thought that made Hiccup smile ever so slightly in content shock. The woman's story truly was one fit for tragedy, but she had told Hiccup that she trusted him,  _him,_  to know it. Nobody had ever trusted him with, well…  _anything._

"Now," the woman leaned forward, the firelight flickering across her face. "I want the truth from you, Hiccup… why did you let the Night Fury go?"

Hiccup looked at the woman before glancing at the silent form of the Night Fury that was staring up at him with unblinking serpentine eyes. His face fell dejectedly as he spoke, "He reminded me of myself."

The woman cocked her head to the side, showing her confusion as she looked at him with unblinking eyes. Hiccup continued so as to not confuse her, "I wouldn't kill him, because he looked as terrified as I was. I looked at him… and I saw myself."

The woman shifted at his statement, back arched tensely as her fingers wrapped around the wooden staff tightly with a furrowed brow and a pained grimace twisted on her lips. She didn't seem pleased to hear what Hiccup said, though he didn't know why.

"You don't have to be a Viking to be happy, Hiccup," the woman whispered to him softly, "You don't have to be one of  _them_ ," she said the last word as though it left a bitter taste in her mouth, "To find a friend, someone who understands you and cares for you, doesn't mean that you have to change who you are. If you do so, than you're just living a lie. It is better to find someone who understands and can relate to yourself, that is how true friendships are formed." She suddenly paused, hesitant, as though wondering on what to say next.

"You let this beautiful creature go," she rubbed the Night Fury's jaw lovingly, tracing the midnight scales with a gentle finger. "You could have killed him or left him bound in the woods, but you let him go. I told you that I myself couldn't,  _wouldn't,_  kill a dragon when I lived amongst Vikings." She looked at him with a soft smile, eyes so warm they took Hiccup aback at their warmth. "You're just like me."

He blinked at her words, he himself had realized that he was similar to the mysterious woman seated before him. But to actually hear her say it and actually sound pleased… it made him happy. To know that there was someone else like him, someone different. It made him feel welcome.

It made him feel less alone.

"So, tell me about yourself."

Hiccup blinked at that in surprise. "W-What do you mean?"

She looked at him with confusion, a lone brow raised ever so slightly before she continued. "I know your name, I know your face, I know that there is potential within you, but I do not know you, Hiccup… I would like to know you," the woman whispered that last part silently, so soft he could almost not hear it.

"Y-You want to know about  _me?"_  Hiccup asked bewildered as he sheepishly scratched the back of his head nervously. Nobody had ever asked him about himself. "Like what?"

"Your favorite food, favorite color, what do you like to do in your free time. Things like that." The woman in the mask said curiously, as though she actually cared about those things. Judging by her tone, she actually did, which made absolutely no sense to the socially awkward and ostracized teenager.

"Uhmm…" he scratched the back of his head nervously, for once in his life unable to think of anything to say.

The woman smiled at him softly, something about it made Hiccup feel calm and comforted. "I like to…" Hiccup furrowed his brows in thought, trying to figure out what he liked to do. If anyone else had been asking him this, Hiccup would have immediately lied and said training, practicing with his weapons, or maybe even dragon hunting. But this woman had trusted him with a piece of her life, it was only right to return the favor. "I love to sketch." He pulled out his leather sketchbook from the folds of his fur coat and opened it to a page that depicted a well-detailed sketch one of the monstrously massive Viking statures that acted like silent sentinels to Berk.

The woman stretched out her hand, slender fingers spread out as far as they could go, "C-Can I?" She asked him, suddenly looking nervous.

Hiccup wordlessly handed over his sketchbook to the woman. There was a brief moment of silence as the woman flipped through the pages of Hiccup's sketchbooks. The images were random, sometimes it was a sheep, another time it was sketches of buildings, some of them looked to be blueprints for inventions, but they all had something in common. They were very well done and greatly detailed.

"These are beautiful, Hiccup." The woman told him, glancing up from a detailed drawing of what looked to be a yak drawn with great attention to small details, he had even drawn individual hairs to make it more realistic. She had never seen such talent in drawing before.

Hiccup blinked at her kind words, not understanding for a slight moment that the woman was being sincere. He was so used to taunts and sarcasm that he had honestly forgotten what a sincere compliment was. He felt that tingle within him again, that feeling of happiness.

The woman leaned forward, face set with an anticipated smile. Hiccup realized that she was waiting for another thing he liked to do. He smiled despite himself, honestly enjoying the attention that wasn't full of anger, resentment or disappointment. This was nothing like his talks with the villagers, who mocked and belittled him, or his talks with his father, which was mostly just one-sided as his father never let him speak his mind. Because of those conversations, Hiccup was usually a bit bitter with sarcasm and dry humor, because if he didn't insult people than nobody would pay attention to him.

To be able to actually talk to someone who was actually listening… it was nice.

"I'm Gobber's apprentice. He's the village's blacksmith." Hiccup said shyly, still somewhat bewildered at the positive attention directed towards him.

He waited for the woman to laugh at him, telling him that there was no way possible that someone like Hiccup, what with his frail arms and short stature, could ever hope to become a blacksmith that had to be massive in strength and size to do the job. But she didn't laugh at him, instead her smile seemed to brighten as she asked him, "What do you there?" She sounded like she actually cared, as though his life was fascinating to her.

"I, uh, mostly sharpen weapons and fix shields. None of that heavy duty stuff, Gobber seems to think that if I try and do that, I'll either end up killing myself or someone else." Hiccup said as he twiddled with his thumbs, embarrassed at the realization that his own mentor didn't trust him enough to let him deal with important tasks. Granted, usually whatever Hiccup made in the forge usually ended badly, but that still didn't lessen the hurt.

"I'm sure you're doing a good job," the woman said kindly, there was no mocking in her tone, it was as though she actually respected Hiccup's job as apprentice blacksmith. Hiccup smiled shyly at her, suddenly seeing her in an entirely different light. This woman was so nice to him, nobody had ever really been sincerely nice to him before, not even Gobber or his father could count. She was so sincere and kind when she talked to him, she had told him a very important part of her life because she trusted him, the first person to ever trust Hiccup really, and was even having a civil conversation with him, instead of pushing him off to the side and ignoring him she listed as though he was actually interesting, as though she actually cared for him and his feelings.

Was this what it was like to have somebody to care for you?

Was this what it was like to have a… friend?

 _Were_  they friends? Hiccup certainly hoped so, he had never had a friend before and he had always wanted one.

He remembered countless nights on the eve of Snoggletog, praying to the gods for only one gift. His only wish was to have a friend to play with, a friend who wouldn't pick on him, a friend that cared about him. His wish was never answered. All he got were daggers in his helmet and pieces of candy. No friend ever came, only a bitter disappointment as the child realized that he was all alone and would most likely always be alone.

But this woman… she was the same. She had told him a painful part of her past, something that he doubted she had ever shared with anyone. She had told him that she trusted him. She was just like himself. Different. People who were alike usually became friends right? Is that how it worked? By Thor she was even talking to him,  _actually_  talking to him and she even seemed to enjoy it.

"What do you do?" He asked her curiously, wanting to know more about this mysterious woman sitting before him.

The woman blinked at that, as though surprised that Hiccup had asked the question, for a second there was a moment of panic when Hiccup though he had messed up, but then she smiled and all worry and fear that had bubbled within Hiccup's gut vanished instantly. "I normally don't live in the woods, for one." She said with a teasing smile making Hiccup chuckle at that. As though his laughter had emboldened her, the woman continued. "I told you that I was taken by Cloudjumper to his Nest. I've been living there for years amongst dragons. I've been learning everything there is to know about dragons, discovering their secrets. And I've been saving them as well," suddenly the woman looked angry. "Where I am from, far away from Berk, there is mentioning of a madman by the name of Drago Bludvist… he's trying to amass a dragon army and has his dragon trappers ensnaring dragons of all sorts. I've been trying to stop them."

"A dragon  _army_?" Hiccup asked, aghast at the thought. Viking armies were already bad enough, but the thought of a dragon army was downright terrifying.

The woman nodded her head, looking solemn as she scratched her Stormcutter's blue-tinted chin. Suddenly all the warmth was gone from her, the visage of a kind and caring woman gone and in her place a warrior whose people, or in her case dragons, were under threat.

"I've done my best to stop him. Our Nest is full of dragons Cloudjumper and I have rescued, but there are many trappers out there and only I seem to be the one trying to stop him." The woman looked so solemn as she spoke, as though remembering dark memories of the past. "Drago is a madman." She seemed to realize that Hiccup was staring at her in horror and quickly spoke to calm his fears. "Worry not, Hiccup. Drago might have dragons under his rule, but I am not alone. It will take years for him to pose a threat to your village, that is if he doesn't fall to me." She thought of her Alpha, the king of all dragons that dwelled under the Sanctuary, who cared and commanded his subjects with gentleness but was capable of destroying even the greatest of armadas with his icy breath. If Drago ever tried to take her home and dragons by force, he would soon realize that  _nobody_  threated with her dragons without losing their life.

"Have you tried talking to him? Maybe try to reason with him?"

Hiccup had never been a fan of conflict, despite his upbringing in a Viking village. He had always tried to find a peaceful way out of his situations, though mainly because he would get beaten up if he didn't. Maybe this Drago Bloodyfist could be reasoned with peacefully?

The woman laughed, but it was a short and bitter laugh. "There is no reasoning with Drago Bludvist. He's as cruel as he is mad," she suddenly looked crestfallen, "And the dragons under his command are just victims of his cruelty." She looked so mournful Hiccup wanted to comfort her, but didn't know how. "Good dragons under the control of bad people do bad things, Hiccup."

Hiccup looked away at that, suddenly ashamed that he knew nothing that happened outside of his village. He tried to imagine what his father would think of this Drago Bludvist, would he respect him with how he was capturing dragons, his father's sworn enemies, or would his father loath the idea of keeping the dragons alive instead of just killing them? The thought of a dragon army terrified him, mostly because despite the distance, it could one day arrive on Berk. He had forgotten that there was an entire world out there, Berk was just a small island in it. There was so much Hiccup hadn't seen.

"There's a whole world out there," the woman spoke as though she knew what he was thinking. "You've probably never seen it, what with living on Berk and all. But if you were to ride a dragon," she patted Cloudjumper's shoulder with a grin, "The world and sky is open to you."

 _That sounds nice,_  Hiccup thought to himself wistfully, before he immediately shook his head at the thought. If the villagers ever found out he wondered at the idea of flying on a dragon, they'd hate him even more.

"You said that you've been living with dragons in their Nest, do you mean…?" Hiccup trailed off uncertainly, wondering if the woman's home was what his father was trying to destroy. If she was indeed from that Nest, then should Hiccup really be concerned about the dragons being captured if they were the same ones who raided his village and took their food?

The woman shook her head at that, auburn braids swinging. "No, I live in a different Nest a day or two's flight from here. The Nest your people are trying to find and destroy is not my own." She paused, suddenly looking cross as though remembering something that brought up a sour memory. "I assume that your father and people are searching for the Nest that has been raiding you?"

Hiccup's silence said it all. The woman sighed wearily, suddenly looking far older than she appeared. "Cloudjumper has felt her Call," she spoke as though to herself, staring up at Cloudjumper with distant eyes before returning to look at Hiccup. "Every Nest has its Queen, your Nest is no different."

"Queen?" Hiccup asked, intrigued.

"Aye, a Queen. They're massive dragons, though not as large as a King, the Alpha species of dragons. But Vikings would never stand a chance against a Queen, not even with all their strength and weaponry could they hope to defeat one. If your people do indeed find her Nest… she will kill you all."

The words themselves terrified Hiccup, the thought of a dragon bigger than a Monstrous Nightmare was something to fear. But he couldn't help but notice how the woman spoke about the chances of his people being massacred by this Queen, she was so distant and cold as though she was used to it.

Did she care about humans, or were dragons the only things she cared for?

He looked away from her nervously, suddenly feeling a bit sick to his stomach. His father was searching for the Nest at this very moment… if he found that Nest… he shuddered at the thought of his father facing this mysterious Queen, if what the dragon lady said was true than his father and people didn't have a chance. He felt fear creep into his bones, the thought of some massive dragon burning his home to the ground playing in his mind with startling clarity.

The woman saw the fear in his eyes. She suddenly blushed, pale cheeks tinged red, as though embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Hiccup. I didn't mean to scare you with the ideas of a madman and a Queen, I have forgotten that you're not aware of these situations living on Berk you most likely never get to leave."

"I'm not s-scared," Hiccup said hurriedly, wincing at the catching of his words. Now this kind woman would think him a coward.

She didn't say anything about his tone, if anything she only looked worse as though Hiccup's fear of the unknown had caused her as much pain, if not more. Hiccup, eager for a change in conversation to something lighter, asked her what she had learned about dragons throughout her years living amongst them.

The woman brightened considerably, eyes suddenly gleaming in the firelight as though the single question had ignited some furious passion within the lean woman. She told him so many things, Hiccup's head was reeling as she continued. He could barely understand her, she spoke so fast and so full of passion, but he did get some of the basics.

Gronckles, the dragons that had nearly killed him earlier, were actually gentle creatures if one approached them correctly. They rarely ate meat or fish as they preferred a diet of rocks and ore. Hiccup hadn't known that, he and practically every Viking in the world had always assumed that they were meat eaters due to being dragons.

Nadders loved to be stroked on the tail –though Hiccup doubted he would ever use that information, seeing as those tails were full of sharp spikes- and were curious creatures at heart. They apparently loved to play fetch, something about the chase excited them like puppies after a tasty bone. Hiccup tried to remember that, he would have to face the Deadly Nadder sooner or later, and he would very much love to come out of the Ring unscathed and with all limbs attached.

He didn't know how long he stayed by that fire, listening to the woman and her stories. She told him basic information about dragons, always insisting that dragons weren't the monsters people thought they were, just misunderstood creatures.

He didn't know why, but he was actually beginning to believe her. After all, she was proof that dragon and man could co-exist. The Stormcutter, Cloudjumper, seemed to be extremely attached to the former Viking woman whilst the Night Fury seemed to adore her, though maybe because she was always feeding him small strips of cod from her own meal. She seemed content with her life, having dragons as her companions instead of humans. He didn't see any fear of being alone in her, that haunting terror of eternal loneliness, if anything she looked very happy with her life. He wished he could say the same, but he doubted that even a dragon would want to befriend him.

He didn't realize until he looked up that storm clouds had begun to form, hiding away the rising moon from sight. Thunder boomed softly in the distance, but other than that the cove was silent save for the occasional huff of breathing from the dragons or the crackles of sap from the fire. When had the day turned into night? He was certain that he had entered the cove well in the afternoon, had they been talking for that long? "I should probably leave," Hiccup said softly as he realized that sooner or later –most likely later- people would start to notice that he wasn't in the village. He was surprised to feel sadness form in the pit of his stomach, as though the thought of leaving the kind dragon woman actually hurt him.

The woman looked up at him, face etched with a mournful sadness as well, though Hiccup didn't know why. "Aye, it's well past your bedtime." Something about that sentence made the woman smile slightly as though she found something about her words amusing.

"Can I… Can I come back, tomorrow I mean?" Hiccup asked shyly, looking away from the woman as though he was waiting to hear her say no, to hear her rejection like he had heard it so many times before.

He was surprised to see her smile, a warm and gentle smile that looked ready to split the woman's face. She nodded once, as though at a loss for words. She blinked rapidly before saying "Yes, of course." She looked so pleased as she said that, as though she truly wished to see Hiccup again.

"O-Okay," He said in a stunned tone. Nobody had ever wanted to spend time with him willingly, even though he himself had asked if he could return, it hadn't been the first time for him to ask someone if he could visit again. This was the first time someone had said yes though; all the other times had resulted in a hearty no. "I, uh, should probably go then." He slowly backed away, some force within him seemed to not want to leave the small fire and the woman who sat by it.  _I don't_   _want to leave,_  Hiccup realized.  _But I have to._

Hiccup was determined to return tomorrow, if only to just talk to the woman who was so accepting and kind towards him, a socially awkward and ostracized boy trying to find his place in a world that he wasn't welcome in.

He left the cove without another word, though he kept glancing over his shoulder to see the auburn-haired woman watching him from the fireside, watching him leave with saddened eyes. He hurried his pace, knowing that if he didn't leave people would begin to wonder where he had gone and what trouble he had caused.

 _Goodnight, dragon lady,_  he thought back to her with a soft chuckle as he began to trudge through the forest as rain began to fall in thick, cold droplets.

Valka stared at the small opening to the cove; her heart lighter than it had been since she had first arrived on the Isle of Berk.  _I will see you tomorrow, Hiccup,_  she thought to him with a small smile as she returned her attention to the fire.  _Goodnight, son._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering about Toothless and wondering why he and Hiccup aren't the best of friends, I want to tell everyone that the current timeline is quite literally a few days after Hiccup released Toothless and Valka showed up in front of him (For the exact time of this chapter, just go to the part in the movie where Hiccup first finds Toothless in the cove and drops his charcoal stick). Some of you have been saying that because I had Valka intervene when Toothless was about to roar at Hiccup derailed Hiccup and Toothless' relationship. I just want to say that I specifically had Valka intervene at that moment for two reasons.
> 
> 1\. Valka needed to be introduced sooner or later to Hiccup, and that seemed to be the best time in my opinion. Hiccup is aware as of chapter three that Toothless was not trying to kill him, but rather scare him off, but he is a bit afraid of Toothless at the moment but not because Valka intervened before Toothless roared at him. Hiccup grew up in an environment that was consistently attacked by dragons, so he will obviously be a bit wary of the Night Fury who has been raiding his home for years. I see this as a realistic way for Hiccup to view Toothless before they bond. Toothless and Hiccup WILL have an extremely close bond, even closer than in the first movie thanks to Valka's guidance, but that doesn't mean that they will get that bond overnight. From what I could tell in the movie, Hiccup and Toothless slowly gained each others trust and friendship in the course of several days or a week, but I think that the time duration is short due to the movie's time limit so I will make extensions and write chapters of them bonding (some chapters will just be Toothless and Hiccup bonding without Valka if people really want them) so that we can all get a good idea of their relationship. I love Toothless and Hiccup's bond, and thus I want to write it right so even if it takes several chapters before they completely trust one another, I am willing to write those chapters to make their bond strong. They wont just magically be the best of friends, they have to earn one another's trust like any other relationship.
> 
> Hiccup only thought that Toothless was going to kill him when he was pinned down (he doesn't think that now as stated before) but when the masked lady 'saved' him, that made him trust her because he thought she saved his life, I did it so I could have a foundation on which Valka and Hiccup could grow a relationship. Think of it as hero worship. I did this deliberately so Hiccup would see the masked woman as not some crazy lady riding a dragon, but someone who saved his life. Hiccup hasn't had anyone care for him in the slightest, so when he realized this he will see it as a form of caring and that will make him trust the stranger because he has never had anyone really care for him. So even though he knows that Toothless wasn't going to kill him, he will still see the masked woman in a positive light instead of thinking she was some crazy feral lady.


	6. The Dragon Manual

Hiccup entered the Great Hall as the rain fell, his frail body drenched, and headed towards the only table filled with occupants. His age mates and fellow dragon killer trainees were already there, discussing the Gronckle fight with Gobber as they tore into their meal.

He barely listened to Astrid talking about her mistimed reverse tumble, saying how it threw off her balance and Snoutlout's pathetic attempts at flirting with the young Hofferson. He quietly grabbed his leg of mutton from the table, ignoring Snoutlout's sneer towards him as the larger cousin shifted so there was no room on the bench for him to sit with the other Viking teenagers crowded around one another, and quietly retreated to his own empty table, his back turned to the others as he focused solely on his meal.

"And where did Hiccup go wrong?" Gobber asked the assorted assembly of Viking teenagers, who immediately pounced on the question with gusto.

"Uhm, he showed up?" Ruffnut sneered out as her twin cackled out, "He didn't get eaten?"

"He's never where he should be," Astrid said darkly, remembering the Gronckle from earlier today.

"Thank you, Astrid." Gobber told the young Hofferson with a grin as Hiccup's fingers curled around his knife, knuckles white with anger. Back taut and tense, Hiccup tried to ignore the wave of frustration that erupted from within him, though he couldn't hide the gritted teeth as the others continued to talk as though they found personal joy in insulting him when they knew he could hear every word.

"You need to live an' breathe this stuff," Gobber said seriously as he stalked around the table, his peg leg banging against the cold stone floor. He pulled out a worn out leather book that had the sigil of a dragon on it. "The Dragon Manual," Gobber said as he tossed it on the table. "Everything we know about every dragon we know of." Gobber tapped his finger on the worn leather, as the teens looked at the Manual with wide eyes.

Outside thunder boomed as the rain fell harder than before, making Stoick's right hand man glance upwards towards the roof and the concealed storm brewing outside. Storms meant safety, as no dragon was foolish enough to fly towards their village when Thor himself was watching over them. "No dragon raid tonight," he said gruffly as he headed towards the huge doors as he gestured towards the book written by his ancestor Bork the Bold, "Hurry it up."

Tuffnut shot up from his previous slouched position to stare at the back of Gobber in shocked indignation, "Wait, you want us to  _read_?" He sounded completely horrified, as though Gobber had asked of them the most horrendous of tasks.

"While we're still  _alive?_ " His twin Ruffnut said in complete disgust, lips curled before tightly pressing together in defiance.

"Why read words when you can kill the stuff the words tell stuff about?" Snoutlout demanded as he banged his hand against the table, making the platters clatter, though the son of Spitelout was completely unaware of his smaller cousin's huge eye roll from behind them.

 _Maybe because if you actually know something, it might actually be useful and helpful?_  Hiccup thought to himself dryly, though he was smart enough to not say it to his short-tempered cousin who used to -and still did really- bully him.

"Oh, I've read it, like, seven times!" Fishlegs said energetically, speaking so fast and enthusiastic it got stares from the others. "There's this water dragon that sprays boiling water at your face, and, and, there's this other one that buries itself for like a week and-"

The large Ingerman quieted down when he saw the heated glare coming from Snoutlout Jorgenson and the complete blank looks coming from the twins.

"Yeah I was going to read that," Tuffnut began.

"Buuut now," Ruffnut said with a roll of the eyes and a devilish sneer.

"You guys read, I'll go kill stuff," Snoutlout declared as he heaved himself from the table and strode out of the Great Hall as though to prove his point and masculinity. The cackling twins and Fishlegs, who was still rapidly sprouting facts about some water dragon that could strip a Viking's flesh from his very bones, quickly followed him.

Hiccup realized with a jolt that he was now alone with Astrid.  _Alone_  with Astrid. He couldn't help but feel hopeful that maybe he could impress his crush with his reading skills, surely some ladies saw that as a pro instead of a con, right? He hurried to her side, like a puppy begging for a treat, and tried to sound casual as he said to the girl he had a major crush on, "So… Share?"

Astrid heaved herself to her feet, not even bothering to look at him. "Read it." She said shortly as she hastened to the exit, leaving a disappointed Hiccup behind her.

"Uhh… all right then," he said after her, trying to hide the hurt and disappointment from her. "All right, wow, so okay, I'll uh…" he stopped his stammering when he heard the door slam. He hunched over in his seat in defeat.  _Well that worked,_  he thought to himself dryly.

It seemed that in the afternoon of meeting the dragon lady, where he talked and someone actually listened and talked back, Hiccup had forgotten that back on Berk, nobody wanted to talk to him, much less listen to him. If he wasn't being given orders, he was having a one-sided conversation with his father who refused to let his son get a word in, if he wasn't talking with his father than it was with Gobber who was desperately trying to make sure that Hiccup didn't burn down the village and thus didn't have time to listen to Hiccup's problems.

It was rather sad for Hiccup to realize that a woman he had only known for a day was already ahead of his own father and mentor in terms of conversation. To be honest, Hiccup had felt more appreciated and cared for in one afternoon with a mysterious dragon vigilante lady than fifteen years with his own father and mentor combined, which really said something if one were to look at it.

When he realized that, it made Hiccup suddenly wish to return to that little cove where the woman was staying with the dragons. He had never had anyone to talk to, nobody who would listen to what he had to say. Hiccup knew that the woman wasn't toying with him, and his emotions by faking interest but that she actually cared about what he said instead of zoning him out like the rest of the villagers and his 'friends'.

She had listened to him with rapture, as though every thing he said was something that interested her, she wasn't being polite she was being complete honest when she said that she cared about what Hiccup said. It made him feel that tingle in his stomach again. Happiness.

The thought of returning to someone who actually seemed to care about him, someone who didn't seem to loath his very existence, someone supportive of him… it felt nice. Happy, even.

Hiccup had thoroughly enjoyed his time in that cove, hidden from the rest of the world and it's terrible expectations. For once in his life, Hiccup had finally received some answers to his questions, though some were vague as he still did not know the mysterious yet kind woman's name. The woman seemed to care about him, she seemed to truly care about Hiccup himself instead of Stoick's disappointing and troublemaking son who always needed to keep an eye on.

The thought of returning tomorrow left him completely giddy. The thought of returning to the woman and just talking to her almost left him lightheaded. In all his years of living on Berk he had never had someone to talk to who actually cared about what he said and even listened without tuning him out.

Hiccup had never had a friend before. Was that what they were, friends? He hoped so.

The dragon lady was just so kind and interesting, she didn't care that he couldn't lift a hammer or swing an axe. All she cared about was Hiccup, just plain Hiccup. Not Hiccup the Useless or the disappointing son of chief Stoick the Vast, just Hiccup.

Nobody had ever cared about Hiccup himself, not even his own father, Stoick the Vast. To everyone on Berk he was just a troublemaking runt who needed to learn respect and to get out of everyone's way. Nobody had ever cared about just Hiccup, everyone loathed him because he was just so different from the others.

But that dragon lady didn't seem to care that he was different, in fact she even  _welcomed_  it. Nobody had ever told him that being different was good, everyone had told him that being different made him even more of a burden to his father and Berk. Before tonight, to Hiccup his opinion on being different was about the same as being cursed. Being different meant isolation from everyone else. Being different meant being picked on for being little and weak. Being different meant a life full of loathing and ridicule. Being different meant that nobody else was like you. Being different meant a life alone.

But while he was as different as a Viking could be, Hiccup had found something –or rather  _someone_ \- incredible. He had found another person just like himself, different from what a true, perfect Viking should be. He had found a kindred spirit that understood what true suffering was, being different and everyone hating you for it despite it being completely out of your control. Hiccup couldn't control his difference, because being different was Hiccup's very nature, and everyone hated him for it. But that woman, she was just as different as he was, similar to him in ways that no one else had ever been, and she seemed content and even happy with her life, a life amongst dragons instead of humans, who she did not seem to care for. Yet, she had welcomed him with open arms, with soft smiles and kinder words. She had accepted him when everyone else before her had rejected him.

He couldn't wait to return to that cove. He still had so many questions and for once in his life he had someone willing to answer them.

Hiccup wanted to see her again. He wanted a friend, and for the first time in his life Hiccup felt like he actually had a chance.

Hiccup tried to focus on reading the Dragon Manual, but it held little interest to him. Aside from sketches and the names of the various known dragon species, the information was the same. Kill on sight. Deadly dragon. Kill on sight. This dragon can kill you faster than you could blink. Kill of sight. Kill on sight. Kill on sight. Every page in the Dragon Manual was the same, except for the lone blank page that held the title of  _Night Fury_  on the very last page.

"Night Fury. Speed: unknown. Size: unknown. The Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself. Never engage this dragon. Your only chance… hide and pray it does not find you." He listed off the grim information about the very dragon he had shot down with a frown.

Hiccup knew how deadly a Night Fury could be, one only had to look at the towers and houses that had been destroyed over the years by the dragon's infamous bolts of purple light. But yet the dragon lady had been petting the –as the Dragon Manual stated- Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death Itself as though it was a tame housecat. The Night Fury hadn't liked Hiccup in the slightest, something that actually upset a tiny piece of Hiccup, but the dragon seemed to adore the woman scratching him. He wasn't some mindless beast dead set on killing everything it saw that had a heartbeat. That Night Fury had let him live. He had let Hiccup go when he could have easily crushed him instead of letting him go.

According to the Dragon Manual created by Bork the Bold, one of the most respected Vikings in Berk's history, the Night Fury was an unholy demon who kills without hesitation. He seriously doubted that now that he had seen the dark, elusive dragon purring at the woman's touch. He knew that the Night Fury was dangerous to its foes, but to it's friends, such as the woman, he was harmless and even friendly.

That realization made him wonder. If Bork the Bold, one of the most respected and revered Vikings, was wrong about dragons, what else was he wrong about? If one of the greatest men in Viking culture, long revered for his infinite knowledge, was wrong about dragons and how they would kill anything in sight –which obviously wasn't the case concerning the masked woman and Hiccup himself- and that they must be killed on sight, could anything that Bork had said and written be trusted when he had so greatly misjudged dragons?

Was everything that Vikings knew about dragons… wrong?


	7. The Deadly Nadder

"Hey I, uh, just happened to notice that the Dragon Manual had nothing on Night Furies. Is there like another Manual or a sequel, maybe a little Night Fury pamphlet?" Hiccup ducked as suddenly his axe was blasted to molten pieces by the fire of the Deadly Nadder.

"Focus, Hiccup!" Gobber yelled down at Stoick's son from his higher vantage point in the spectator area of the Ring. "You're not even tryin'!"

Hiccup didn't hear his mentor, though mostly because he had realized that the bird-like Deadly Nadder that had spotted him. The two legged creature had scales the color of the sky, the lightest of blue, with splotches of red scales that looked like giant spots of blood. The dragon's mane was composed of yellowed spikes that rested on the dragon's head like a crown. As he darted around the corner of the maze constructed in the Killing Ring, he caught sight of the Nadder's spiked tail.

"Today is all about attack!" Gobber announced to the Viking teenagers located within the small wooden maze. "Nadders are quick and light on their feet, your job is to be quicker and lighter."

Hiccup was currently running for dear life, weighed down by his Viking shield the poor boy would have most likely been eaten by the captive dragon had the dragon not scented Astrid and hopped over the wooden walls to the blonde Viking girl.

Fishlegs, suddenly under attack by a barrage of spikes, screamed out to their 'instructor' that he was beginning to question Gobber's teaching methods. In which, there was absolutely none whatsoever.

"Look for it's blind spot, every dragon 'as one." Gobber said almost dully, picking at his fake tooth in boredom as though completely uncaring at the multitude of Viking teenagers under attack by a furious Deadly Nadder. "Find it, hide in it and strike!"

Hiccup paused from his desperate attempts of running away from the furious dragon and looked up towards his blacksmith mentor. "So how would one sneak up on a Night Fury?"

"No one has ever seen one and lived to tell the tale, now  _get_   _in there_!"

Hiccup was ready to snap at his mentor, but Astrid whispering his name made him quiet. Astrid and Snoutlout were pressed against the walls, the girl peeking around the corner where the Nadder currently was. When she saw the Nadder look away, she quickly rolled past the opening and back to the safety of the walls ahead of them, Snoutlout following her lead.

Hiccup tried to do the same as his crush and cousin, but the heavy weight of the shield dragged him so he stopped rolling right in front of the Nadder's sight.

The Nadder saw him and screeched out a roar, rushing towards him with a gaping maw filled with razor sharp teeth and spikes bristled. Hiccup quickly turned around the corner, Snoutlout and Astrid having long since fled.

The Nadder appeared behind him, whipping its spiked tail menacingly as it stalked forward, pupils mere slit as it looked at the puny human before him.

Hiccup had no weapon save for his broken axe handle and a shield he could barely lift. He was completely defenseless against the creature.

Until he remembered the conversation with the mysterious dragon lady. She had mentioned something about Nadders… something that calmed them down. What was it?

 _Think, Hiccup, think!_  He thought to himself as he raced throughout the maze, the Nadder still following him and getting closer. The son of Stoick didn't see any of his age mates; they were most likely within another section of the maze, not that he expected any of them to come to his aid.

Just like his entire life, he was alone facing impossible odds.

_Focus, Hiccup! You're not alone!_

He wasn't alone, not really, not any more. The dragon rider had claimed that she that she trusted him, that was caring in his books, and she had told him something about Nadders that could help him. He thought of all those conversations by the fire, listening to the woman and her stories with rapt attention, soaking in her words like a sea sponge. She had said something about Nadders… he only had to remember.

Hiccup suddenly cowered behind his shield, hiding his frail form against the hardened oaken barrier as several sharps Nadder spikes were impaled into the wood, sinking into the iron and wooden shield with ease.

Hiccup wanted to throw his axe handle in frustration. Why couldn't anything ever happen in his favor? He jerked back to avoid more spikes that impaled the ground at his feet as he suddenly remembered what the mysterious woman had told him about the Deadly Nadder.

To gain a Nader's trust you had to stroke it's tail until the dragon was calm, but Hiccup didn't need to earn it's trust, he just wanted to survive the day and get the Hel out of this cursed deathtrap of a Ring run by Gobber. She had mentioned that Nadders loved to play fetch, he had no stick but could his axe handle work?

"H-Hey!" He called out to the aggressive dragon, trying to sound brave when he was really a trembling bundle of nerves. What if it didn't work, what if the woman was wrong? He couldn't see Gobber due to the walls that enclosed him, pressuring him in. He was alone without any guidance from Gobber or anyone else with only the words of a mysterious dragon lady to help him. It was more than what he was used to though and so Hiccup took a leap of faith. "F-Fetch!" he threw the axe handle as far as he could, the adrenaline that was coursing through his body helping him throw it at a respectable distance.

The aftermath was instantaneous. The dragon's eyes suddenly dilated greatly, now no longer thin slits that showed its hostility. With a screech that sounded almost happy, the Nadder turned it's winged back to the chief's son and raced towards the axe handle.

Hiccup took this time to run for his life, dragging his shield laden with Nadder spikes with him in his haste to get away from the spiked dragon.  _It worked!_  He crowed to himself in victory, reminding himself that he had to give the woman his thanks for most likely saving his life. He nearly crashed into Tuffnut, or maybe it was Ruffnut, as he turned around the corner.

The twin, he never could tell the difference despite the different genders, sneered at him and hurried around the corner with a demented cackle.

Safe away from the Nadder for now, Hiccup looked around to find Gobber inspecting the maze with an experienced eye. He took this time to speak up about something he had been wondering since Hiccup had first seen the woman fly with the Stormcutter. "Has anyone ever, you know, ridden a dragon before?"

Gobber looked at him as though he had grown two heads. "Those who were stupid enough to attempt it turned into nice burnt crisps for the beast. No one has ever ridden a dragon, no one will." He stated affirmably, as though he had complete trust in the notion that all dragons were evil demons.

 _That's what you think,_  Hiccup thought to himself with a sulk. He felt anger rise within him directed towards Gobber the Belch. He might have been his mentor for blacksmithing, but the Viking's way of teaching dragon slaying definitely needed some work. Was he waiting for one of the teenagers to die in the Ring before actually helping them? He also couldn't help but feel angry at how close-minded his mentor was, how fixed in his ways the Viking was. He could never see Gobber changing his tune about dragons, he could never see the hulking blonde man with missing limbs ever riding a dragon. Gobber was a Viking, and a proud one at that. He would never understand. Gobber had never understood Hiccup. Nobody did.

Except for that dragon rider.

When he had talked to her, she had listened. When she knew about his life on Berk, how he was treated, she understood as she had gone through it herself before her dragon companion, Cloudjumper, had taken her away from her old life. It was sad to think about it really, that someone he barely knew was actually one of the few people he trusted and thought of with respect. She deserved his respect because despite her mysterious nature, there was something about her presence –how calming she was to him with her kind words and gentler smiles- that made Hiccup yearn to spend more time with her. To know more about her.

The past few days had made the boy really start to think about his life on Berk and the people who lived there. The villagers didn't care for him, the dragon rider did. She had asked him things about himself that nobody had ever asked. Even his own father had never asked him what he liked to do in his free time, his father most likely assumed it was training to build up muscle to be a more acceptable son. But that woman did, and she even seemed to love what he did that many would consider extremely unViking, she loved his sketches and admired his quick wit whereas the villagers found it annoying.

" _Hiccup!"_

This time Gobber's yell wasn't full of annoyance, but fear.

Hiccup barely had time to register the sounds of wood crashing and splintering, the harsh squawks of a furious Deadly Nadder, the shouting and screaming of his fellow dragon trainees before he heard Astrid scream out his name as something suddenly collapsed on him.

Whatever had fallen on him was soft and hard at the same time, cold and warm to the touch. His face flushed and his body burned in both embarrassment and pleasure when he realized that it was Astrid. Those feelings immediately disappeared and were replaced with terror when he realized it was  _Astrid._

Astrid was yanking on his arm that was gripping his shield. Her beloved axe was stuck on the wood and she was desperately trying to free it. He could easily see why.

The Nadder had knocked over all the wooden walls of the maze, leaving the two Viking trainees in its sight. There was no more contentment in the Nadder's eyes that had been in them when Hiccup had thrown it the axe handle. All that he saw was a burning fury that was directed towards Astrid with hatred.

"Oooh, love on the battlefield," Ruffnut, or maybe it was Tuffnut, was sneering from beside the other twin along with Snoutlout and Fishlegs. None of them attempted to help them, even with the Nadder rushing towards them, they were content to take a little break and see how Astrid would handle the Nadder and how Hiccup would most likely get eaten as a snack.

"She could do better," Ruffnut, he thought it was Ruffnut, commented offhandedly.

Astrid looked furious, but even with all her fury directed towards him, Hiccup couldn't help but feel hopeful because even if she looked angry at him now, surely that would fade, right? Maybe if he showed her his sketches she would be like the lady in the woods and appreciate it or maybe she would just like his personality –it was much better than Snoutlout's at least-, maybe he could finally prove himself to her that just because he wasn't built like his father didn't necessarily mean that he was worthless.

Astrid tore Hiccup's shield from his grip, axe still embedded, as she swung it at the Nadder. The wooden shield reinforced with iron bolts immediately shattered against the Nadder's face, sending the dragon crashing into the ground with an indignant and hurt squawk. The Nadder rose to its feet shakily, pupils still thin but full of terror as it fled to the safety of its cage.

The ring was silent save for Astrid's heavy pants and the hurt squawks of the Nadder, all anger and rage gone from the scaled creature and instead full of hurt and fear of the Vikings that surrounded the dragon.

And then Astrid looked at him with a look so cold and full of fury it made him curl instinctively as though to protect himself from her rage. He shyly glanced around the Ring to see Snoutlout, the twins and even Fishlegs looking at him with those same cold eyes. He looked up to see Gobber shaking his head in disappointment. He realized what was wrong and it hit him hard.

He had messed up.  _Again._

"Is this some kind of joke?" Astrid's voice was quiet but full of seething fury as she looked down on the terrified and paralyzed form of Hiccup Haddock with eyes full of contempt. The same eyes as the villagers. "Our parents' war is about to become our own…" She held her axe tightly in her hand, brandishing it before him, the tip nearly slicing his cheek as she spoke again with such open disdain and scorn it made Hiccup want the earth to swallow him whole. "Figure out what side you're on." She left the Ring furiously as the other Vikings teens flocked after her, leaving Hiccup alone in the Ring.

Hiccup slowly sat up, hands gripping his auburn locks as he resisted the urge to scream. Why _,_   _why_  was it that every time he did something, it just backfired and made everyone hate him even more? He hadn't even done  _anything,_  it was  _Astrid_  who had fallen on top of him, and it was  _Astrid_  who had gotten her stupid axe stuck in his shield. Why was nobody yelling at  _her_  for messing up?

 _Because she's Astrid Hofferson, the greatest warrior in your generation who will win the honor of killing the Monstrous Nightmare before the whole village without so much as a struggle and you're just a little hiccup. A runt. A useless runt who can never do anything right,_  he thought to himself, almost apathetically as though he couldn't comprehend it, because he had heard it so many times from both himself and the Vikings with their terrible taunts and whispers and had just gotten used to it.

Gods, it hurt.

The Ring was empty when he finally looked back up with teary eyes. Not even Gobber, his own mentor, had stayed around to console him and tell him that Astrid was wrong about him, but he wouldn't have expected it anyway, even from Gobber. Nobody on Berk truly cared about him, they just assumed he was useless and a troublemaker all because he was born different from the others, smaller but smarter.

He slowly stood up on shaky feet and began to head to the exit. As he passed through the small tunnel, he paused when he saw the village before him. Astrid's words were still playing in his mind, over and over again like a mantra.

" _Figure out what side you're on."_

The thing was, Astrid had been right when she had spoken to him in what she had assumed to be heated jest. Astrid didn't know that some dragons were different from the ones that raided Berk. He remembered the Stormcutter, Cloudjumper, and how the dragon lady had stated that he was her greatest companion and friend. Astrid and the others would never believe that such a thing could exist, a friendly dragon. To them all dragons deserved an axe to the face. They didn't know, but Hiccup did.

He had found an entirely new world the night before, a world where dragon and human coexisted in peace. A world where his size didn't matter, only his wit and heart. A world where the woman had said he could find his place and be respected. A whole new world full of possibilities.

He liked that world a lot better than the world presented before him right now, the Viking world.

He didn't know what side he was on though. Would he remain on Berk's side, or the side of the dragons? He didn't know too much about the mysterious woman to make such a life changing decision. He couldn't decide yet. Astrid had said that the war that their parents fought in was about to be their own, but Hiccup's mother had apparently been against the war before her death. She hadn't thought that the war needed to be fought, but that peace could reign instead of more death and bloodshed.

The dragon lady had thought that too, now that Hiccup thought about it.

Hiccup had to wonder that if his mother was still alive, would she agree with the mysterious woman who lived with dragons? Would she like the idea of her only child trying to learn more about dragons themselves instead of how to kill them? The villagers all said that his mother didn't like the sight of spilt dragon blood, she didn't like the killing, and honestly he didn't like it either. The dragon lady didn't like it, just like his mother and himself.

 _Maybe if I learn from that woman… I can follow in my mother's footsteps,_  Hiccup realized as he looked at Berk from the entrance of the Ring.  _I can do what she did and not kill dragons. Sure she only protested the fighting and never had the chance to realize that she was right, that dragons can be peaceful, but maybe I could make her proud by doing the same. I need to give dragons a chance, just like my mother did. Would she be proud that I let the Night Fury go? Would she be proud of me, even though I'm so small? Would she be proud that I don't want the fighting to continue, but for it to stop?_

Hiccup hoped so, he truly did. He had never known his mother, had never known a mother's love or even a father's love. He had been alone since his mother had died when he was a baby, his father never had time for his disappointing fishbone of a son. But maybe if he did this… he could make his mother proud as she watched from the Halls of Valhalla.

After all, what did Hiccup have to lose?

He had nothing holding him back from rushing back to that cove where the mysterious dragon lady was currently living in with her Stormcutter and the Night Fury. It wasn't like anyone would notice he was gone, nobody really cared about the little hiccup causing trouble. His father was gone on yet another search for the Nest and wouldn't be back for several weeks if the winds were strong and the fleet wasn't completely annihilated. Nobody was waiting for him back at home in that empty house. Gobber was too busy training the other respectable Viking teenagers to notice that his charge wasn't in the village. He could die and nobody would notice.

It hurt, but not as much as before.

Maybe because Hiccup realized that the dragon lady would notice if he died, he was supposed to come back today and she actually seemed excited to see him. She noticed him when nobody else had.

That thought made him pleased.

He had to give her something, something to prove to both himself and to her that he wasn't useless. She was so nice to him last night, she asked about him and what he liked to do, she actually seemed to care about him. He had to give her something, a gift, just like how she had given him a gift. She had given him the gift of companionship, and for someone who had never had a friend or anyone to care about them, that was the greatest gift of all.

He had to go to her. He needed her kind words and tender smiles. He didn't want to be in Berk for anymore than a second, where all there was were harsh words and sneers of contempt.

But first he had to get her something.

He rushed to his house, stumbling into Vikings in his haste as he raced through the narrow streets. He ran into his house and slammed the door before heading to the kitchen. He grabbed a whicker basket and hurried to the pantry, grabbing everything he could reach. Bread, fruits, meats, fish, anything he could grab he stuffed in the basket.

He ran out the empty house with the basket held in his arms, clutched tightly to his chest. He raced through the forest, trying to not trip on anything in his way. He knew the way to the cove from his many adventures during his childhood. The woods had always been a sanctuary for a little boy with no friends to call his own. He knew his way around the place with great clarity.

He raced towards the cove as though chased by demons, though it was really the bitter existence of his life on Berk that truly drove him forward. He ran from it, tripping all the way, as though to escape. He ran to escape Astrid's words, to escape the reminders of his isolation by his own people, he ran from the contempt in the eyes of those who called him Hiccup the Useless, he ran from his life. He ran from everything.

The only thing that kept him going, the only thing that prevented him from falling to the ground in despair, was the thought of the dragon lady. The only one who had ever cared about Hiccup, despite only knowing him for a few days. The only one who had never looked at him with contempt, never once ridiculing him, never once judging him. The only one who had accepted him.

She was what was giving him the strength to run, she was what prevented him from breaking as he ran from Berk. She and a whole new world of possibilities. A world where he could find a friend and companion with a dragon, hopefully the Night Fury. A world where he could be accepted, instead of rejected.

Was it odd that a woman whose name Hiccup did not even know, a woman who he had only truly known for only a day or so be so important to him?

Perhaps it was, but Hiccup didn't mind it.

All his life he had wanted acceptance, he yearned for it – _craved_  it- but despite his many attempts –failures- to find that acceptance with his agemates or other villagers, he had never found it. All he had found in Berk was bitter resentment and ridicule, all he found was an empty house to go home to, cold and bare of anything that resembled a family. All Hiccup had found was a life so desolate it was rather pathetic, just as pathetic as everyone believed him to be.

But now?

Maybe life was finally looking up. Maybe Hiccup had found what he had been looking for all his life, acceptance and companionship. Maybe finally Hiccup had found someone willing to know him, to accept him and maybe even teach him.

Hiccup kept running, never stopping, towards the cove.


	8. Toothless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While learning more about dragons, Hiccup is given a tremendous responsibility by the mysterious dragon lady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the kind comments left behind on the last chapter! I'm glad you guys are enjoying the story. Also don't worry, there will be some solo Toothless and Hiccup bonding coming your way soon!

The basket full of food seemed to weigh more by the second as Hiccup hurriedly ran through the worn game trails towards the cove, but the young Berkian just continued onwards, even if it did seem as though Mjölnir itself was in his basket. It seemed to take forever to reach the general location of the cove, but when he saw the small crevice-like opening, he hurriedly entered with only a little caution.

He peeked around the rock and grinned greatly when he saw the Stormcutter tussling with the Night Fury whilst the dragon lady watched the two from besides a small fire. She was wearing her mask and her staff was placed on her knees.

He entered the clearing slowly, watching with wide eyes as the two dragons immediately stopped their playful roughhousing to stare at him with large, serpentine eyes. The Stormcutter's pupils were wide and dilated, like rounded mirrors. The Night Fury's pupils were thin slits however and the dark dragon turned its back to the small Viking trainee with a low snarl. The woman looked at him; her face hidden behind the mask.

She took the mask off quickly, revealing a grinning face that was staring at him with barely controlled glee. It took him by surprise, to see someone look so pleased to see him. Hiccup wasn't used to positive attention.

"You came back," the former Viking woman stated softly, a soft smile on her face that made Hiccup grin as well.

"Yeah, I came back," he said softly, suddenly shy as she stood up and walked towards him. The way she walked was more of a lurch, reminiscent of when her dragon walked, but the way she moved was so graceful it made Hiccup envious.

She cocked her head to the side slightly as she looked at the basket in Hiccup's arms, a thin brow raised ever so slightly. "What is this?" She asked curiously as she looked at the basket.

"Oh, this?" He placed the basket on the ground gingerly and opened it. He took out a loaf of bread and a small jam of preserved jelly, something uncommon during this time of year but Hiccup had been saving it for a special occasion. Meeting with a mysterious vigilante dragon lady had to count as a special occasion, right? "I brought you some food. I thought that, well," he scratched the back of his head nervously, "Since you're living in the woods and before that in a dragon Nest I thought that…" he blushed slightly when she looked at him with amusement, and not an amusement that meant she was mocking him but rather a warm amusement that wasn't cruel, but kind. "You haven't eaten anything like this in a long time."

The woman blinked at that, head still tilted as she gazed at the basket. She didn't say anything, only looking down at the basket with an expression that Hiccup didn't recognize.

Hiccup stilled suddenly, what if she didn't like what he brought her? She wasn't saying anything, surely that meant Hiccup had insulted her or something. Hiccup shrunk back from her instinctively, eyes squeezed shut as he waited for her to yell at him for being a screw up, for being useless like the villagers always did. Great, he hadn't even had a friend for a day, and he had already ruined it. He was such a-

"Thank you."

Hiccup's eyes snapped open at the soft voice, blinking several times as though he was terribly confused, which he was. He felt his heart soar a little; did that mean she liked it?

"Y-You like it?" Hiccup asked, suddenly shy as he fiddled with his tunic. Had anyone ever told Hiccup thank you before? He didn't remember it, so probably not. He had been called a nuisance and pest a multitude of times, but never had 'thank you' been directed towards him, or anything positive really. At least not until the dragon lady showed up.

The woman was smiling at him, a gentle and soft smile that made him feel safe and comforted. She grasped the whicker basket filled with fruits, bread, meat and fish with tight hands, as though afraid she would drop it. "Thank you, Hiccup. You are too kind."

She nodded her head towards the small fire already burning, "Would you care to eat with us?"

Hiccup nodded shyly nodded his head and headed towards the fire, dragging with him the larger basket. He opened the lid and pulled out a fat trout, hooking it with his fingers he slowly placed it at Cloudjumper's feet and backed away hurriedly.

The Stormcutter stared at him, purrs rumbling from his massive frame as he slowly slurped the fish up. Hiccup laughed nervously, still not used to such actions.

Valka watched from her position by the fire as her son returned to the basket and grabbed a second fish, she watched with interest as Hiccup slowly approached the unnamed Night Fury, whose pupils formed into slits at the intrusion. The dragon looked at the boy and then the fish, pupils slowly dilating as the aroma of fish overtook his senses.

The dragon leaned his head forward, maw wide that showed off his toothless gums. Hiccup was surprised at that, "Huh… Toothless… I thought for sure that you had-"

Suddenly teeth emerged from the dragon's gums and before Hiccup could so much as blink, the Night Fury tore the fish from the boy's grip and swallowed it whole. "Teeth…" He finished, suddenly terrified again.

The Night Fury slowly crawled forward, head tilted to the side as his nostrils flared. "Uh, oh no…" Hiccup felt alarm creep up him, realizing that the dragon wanted more food, which he didn't have. He knew that the dragon could be kind and gentle, but he seemed to only be that way to the dragon lady. This dragon had killed many of the Vikings, Hiccup's people, which was something he couldn't forget at that moment. "I don't have anymore!" Hiccup tripped over his own feet and crawled until his back struck a bolder, he saw the woman rise to her feet and slowly walk over to them, there was something about her coming to his rescue that was oddly calming to him.

The dragon looked at him, almost crossly, before his eyes closed and his throat began to convulse jerkily. Suddenly something wet and slimy landed in his lap. It was half of a fish.

"Uh…" Hiccup could honestly say he had absolutely no idea on what to do. He saw the armored figure pause in her approach, her masked head cocked to the side as she watched on. The Night Fury glanced at him before he sat on his hind legs, reminiscent of a human.

The dragon then glanced down at the slimy half eaten fish and then back to Hiccup; suddenly the dark dragon made a gulping noise as he nodded his head in Hiccup and the fish's direction.

 _By Thor, you have got to be kidding me,_  Hiccup thought as he realized what the Night Fury wanted him to do. He glanced behind the dragon towards the woman, silently begging her for help. She only nodded her head, as though agreeing with the dragon, her form was hunched over as she crawled closer to watch.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Hiccup raised the fish to his mouth, resisting the urge to dry heave when he smelled the pungent odor. The dragon was still staring at him, patiently waiting. Hiccup slowly bit into the fish, gagging as he ripped a small piece of it off. It was cold and slimy and Hiccup could honestly say it was the worst thing he had ever tasted. The dragon made a swallowing noise and Hiccup wanted to scream at him. Hiccup swallowed it whole, sputtering as the slimly fish, scales and all, slowly crawled down his throat with the pace of a snail.

The midnight colored dragon licked his lips. Something about the way the Night Fury was staring at him, pupils rounded and eyes wide, made Hiccup smile.

The dragon leaned forward, studying the odd and small Viking boy. Suddenly the tips of his muzzle began to curl back ever so slightly, showing off his toothless gums.

 _He's smiling,_  Hiccup realized suddenly. He remembered what the woman had done, how she had presented her open palm to the dragon and how he had leaned into her touch. He slowly stood up and raised his palm to the smiling dragon, fingers outstretched to touch his snout.

The dragon immediately stopped smiling when he saw the approaching fingers, his pupils constricting into thin slits, teeth emerging from his gums, and snarled at the boy before bounding over to Cloudjumper.

Hiccup slowly lowered his arm and wrapped his arms around his knees in disappointment at the rejection. He started when he heard the woman speak directly behind him, "He likes you."

Hiccup scrambled away from the boulder as he realized that somehow the woman had climbed upon it to stare down at him. "I wouldn't say that," he said sullenly, remembering how the Night Fury liked the woman perched before him. He had never seen him growl at  _her_.

Valka saw the sullen look and instantly realized what was wrong. "You're jealous," she said pointedly.

Hiccup glared at her, "I am not!"

Valka was smiling so wide she thought her face would break, Hiccup was jealous of her bond with dragons, which meant he wished for such a bond as well. Her son truly did take after his mother. "You are!" She crowed with a boisterous laugh that made her entire body shake.

 _I can train him all that I know,_  she thought excitedly.  _Everything I've learned over the past fifteen years. Everything I've learned about the dragons and their secrets, I can show him. Together, there is nothing that can stop us. For what is more powerful than a bond between mother and son?_

"I…" Hiccup tried to stall for time, trying to think of anything to disprove that he wasn't jealous of the woman's close friendship with the Night Fury. He could have said that as a Viking, he thought the idea of being friends with a dragon was blasphemy, but he wasn't a true Viking and the woman knew that. He finally had to admit defeat, "Okay, so I'm jealous. How could I not? You're… you're amazing!" He exclaimed with a dramatic wave of his arms. "The way you treat the dragons, the way they treat you! It's something I've never seen before, something I never thought was possible." He said this softly, gazing at her with wide green eyes that were the mirror image of Valka's own.

"I could teach you," the woman told him, sounding so eager it took him aback. "I can teach you all that I know!" Valka could hardly believe that this was happening, never in her wildest dreams had she ever believed that she would teach her son the ways of the dragons, but yet here they were!

"You… train me?" Hiccup asked softly, as though hardly believing his ears.

 _Nobody has ever offered to train me. Nobody. Gobber only took me on as an apprentice because dad thought the work would give me the muscles I was sorely lacking. That didn't really turn out well, now that I think of it. All dad got was a son who had the strength of a sea sponge and the gift to make everything around him explode. Nobody ever really cared enough to train me… why is she doing this? Is it really just because I let the Night Fury go, or is something more than that?_ Hiccup thought to himself.

"What exactly would you train me in?" Hiccup had to know, his curiosity too strong to not know.

The woman nodded her head again; Hiccup saw that she was smiling widely. "Everything I know can be yours," she told him as she walked closer, placing a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. There was something comforting about the touch, a touch that made Hiccup's stomach tingle. "If you only just let me show you."

_I can finally learn about dragons, actually learning about them. No more of that 'extremely dangerous, kill on sight' from the Dragon Manual. She knows everything and anything about dragons, and she's offering to teach me?_

Hiccup tried to find a reason to refuse. He knew what everyone else would say: Hiccup was a Viking, he was supposed to kill dragons, not take care of them. His father would disown him in a heartbeat if he found out he had released the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death and was actually trying to gain his trust and, maybe, his friendship. The woman before him in the savagely painted spiked mask was an enemy of Berk, for she had obviously sided with dragons, by learning from her he was betraying his people, Berk and all they stood for.

But yet… all those reasons mattered little to him. Why should he care what the villagers thought of him, when they already hated him and thought him an outcast? Would it really matter if his father disowned him, though it would hurt for sure, when he had finally found something in his life that made him happy?

This woman before him was different. Sure he had only known her for a week at most, but in that short period of time, Hiccup had finally found someone who actually cared about him, just plain Hiccup and not the village outcast and his father's greatest disappointment. She cared about him. She had to. Why else would she offer to train him, a possible enemy? Granted he wasn't really a threat or her enemy, but he could easily tell the villagers of where she was, but he would never do that. He would never do that to her.

He trusted this woman, this crazy dragon lady who had saved his life.

And somehow he knew that the woman trusted him. She had, after all, told him her story about how she came to learn everything about dragons, about her previous life on a village like Berk, and even about the son she had lost.

"I-I… yes," Hiccup said energetically, clenching his hands into small fists in his excitement. "Yes! Please, teach me!"

 _He's so eager to learn; he get's that from me,_  Valka thought to herself as she laughed, clapping her hands together. "Very well. Your training starts first thing in the mornin'."

Hiccup deflated at that, "I, uh, can't meet you in the mornings…"

He saw the woman tilt her head in confusion, "Why ever not?"

"I, uh, have… dragon training then," he whispered those last few words softly, as though hoping that she couldn't hear it. Of course she did, he watched her straighten up, tense like a cornered animal. "But I didn't ask for it!" He hurriedly put in, hoping that she would see that he didn't want to be a Viking, he didn't want to be a dragon killer. "My dad makes me go, so I have to, not because I want to."

"Do you know what happens at the end of that training?" Her question was so soft, so cold it made the boy shrink back timidly. He had to admit, the woman was absolutely terrifying at times. Maybe even scarier than his father, which itself was a near impossible feat.

"You kill a dragon…" he whispered to her, admitting the terrible fact that neither wanted to hear, but both knew to be true.

She stared at him, eyes darkened dangerously with lips pressed together in a furious frown. "Yes, you do." She said with a tone as cold as ice and as sharp as a blade.

"But that's okay, because only of us get the honor, well not really an honor if you think about it, of killing the dragon. You've probably never seen my fellow trainees.  _They're_  the Vikings, they're strong and tough. I won't stand a chance against them in training," Hiccup tried to sound optimistic, as though trying to convince the woman who had offered to train him just how useless he was in a fight. The massacre with the Gronckle in his head, how he had nearly died when the others didn't. "There's no way in Valhalla that I'll be the one who has to kill the dragon."

"And what if you  _are_  chosen to slay the dragon?" the woman asked him coldly, all former excitement gone like morning dew in the harsh sunlight. She was slowly walking towards him, stalking towards him like a silent predator. Hiccup slowly backed away from her.

"I, uh… hadn't actually thought that part out," Hiccup said with a nervous, shaky laugh. "But I can still train with you after Gobber's lessons!" He interjected hopefully, though his hopes were dashed when she didn't reply. Hiccup felt his heart stop beating, cold terror flooding his veins.  _Is she not going to train me anymore?_  He thought in horror,  _No! I… I need to know these things… I finally have a chance to prove myself to someone. Even if it's not to the villagers or Gobber or even dad… I can prove myself to her; I can prove that I am worth being trained; that I'm worth **something**._

All his life, Hiccup had wanted someone who cared about him. Someone who would talk to him and help him with his problems, or even just listen to him for once. He had finally found that person in the woman creeping before him; he couldn't lose her trust. He just  _couldn't!_  He had finally just made a friend, and by Odin's ghost he was going to make sure they stayed like that.

"I'm sorry," Hiccup whispered to her, terrified of her rejection like so many before her. "Please don't hate me." He all but begged her, terrified of being alone yet again.

Valka paused her advance, realizing that her son was terrified of her, or rather her rejection. Her anger left her as quickly as it had come, leaving only a stinging guilt for being the cause of her son's pain.

"No… I'm sorry," The woman said sounding mournful, eyes still dark but all the former anger gone from her in the blink of an eye, if anything she looked upset with herself. "I should not have reacted so harshly. I know that you would never kill a dragon, Hiccup. I just forgot that you have expectations to fulfill back in your home."

 _Expectations I don't want to fulfill,_  Hiccup thought gloomily. "So… You're not mad at me?" He winced at how pathetic he sounded, the desperation for any form of acceptance easily noticeable.

"I am mad, Hiccup, but not at you. I'm angry at your villagers for how they treat you." The woman looked away angrily, staring at the ground with clenched fists.

It unnerved him to see someone actually care about him and how he felt. The Vikings of Berk didn't care if he heard their taunts, if anything they spoke even louder when they caught sight of his lanky form, but the woman before him actually seemed to regret her actions, as though she was upset for upsetting him. An interesting paradox in Hiccup's opinion and completely confounding the boy.

"I know that you would never kill a dragon and for that I am more proud of you than you would ever know." She told him with a soft smile.

Hiccup remembered their first conversation, of how she told that he was strong for not being a Viking. That he was stronger than them,  _better_  than them. It made him experience that tingling feeling in his gut that spread throughout his body and made him feel taller and lighter, that feeling of happiness that someone was actually proud of him and not ashamed of him.

"… Thank you…"

He blinked at how soft his tone was, how gratifying it was. He hadn't realized until then, when he heard his own voice, that he truly did care about her opinion of him. He wanted her attention and respect, he craved it like a parched man did precious water.

"Could you forgive me, for doubting you?" She looked at him fearfully, as though terrified of his rejection. Hiccup blinked at her words, already preparing to ask  _her_  for forgiveness for bringing up the subject of what exactly would happen during his dragon training. It warmed his heart though, to hear her concern for his opinion of her. He had never ever had someone ask him for forgiveness.

"Yes, of course."

She smiled at him, a wide beam that made her eyes shine. She suddenly perked up slightly, as though thinking of a great idea. "Come here," she grabbed him by the hands and guided him over to Cloudjumper, who was watching the interaction with a toothy grin. The Stormcutter winked out a greeting towards his rider's son.

"I saw how you tried to touch the Night Fury," She began as Hiccup's face fell at the reminder of the dragon's rejection. "Don't worry about that, Hiccup. Befriending a dragon is always difficult, you only need to earn his trust. You saw what happened when you gave him that fish, correct?"

"You mean where I had to eat a raw fish?" Hiccup asked as he remembered the interaction with nausea.

The woman was still smiling, nodding her head at Hiccup's statement as though he had just told her the most joyous of news instead of what Hiccup viewed as a disgusting experience. "A dragon who shares his food with you means that there is already a bond, if only a weak one. He could have easily withheld that fish, but instead he gave half of it to you. There is a bond between you and the Night Fury, Hiccup." She said this suddenly, as though afraid she wouldn't have the chance to speak again. "You must understand this, what that means! You have the chance to experience something wonderful: a bond shared between a human and dragon. I too have this bond with Cloudjumper here." She smiled warmly at the Stormcutter who winked an amber eye at them. "You can have this bond as well."

"A-A bond?"

"Friendship, Hiccup." She was looking at him earnestly, almost pleadingly as though afraid of something. "You have the chance to experience something no one other than myself has ever experienced: a bond with a dragon. If you allow this to happen, if you trust me and you trust him you can experience a camaraderie with this beautiful creature. If you allow this bond to form you will find your greatest companion, your greatest friend." She held out her hand to Hiccup, her son, pleadingly. "All you have to do is trust me." She said to him softly, gazing into the bewildered eyes of her child with a soft determination in her eyes to make her only child see sense.

 _A friend?_  Hiccup thought in wonder, almost numb to the world as he thought of what the woman had just told him. Was it truly possible? Could he really befriend the Night Fury who had given him that fish? Could it be possible that the Night Fury could befriend Hiccup as well?

"Let me show you," Valka said softly as she slowly crept forward towards her teenaged son, slowing grasping his much smaller hands with her own. She gently guided her son towards Cloudjumper, who was watching the scene silently. She paused right in front of her beloved friend, stopping Hiccup as well. "You know that the Night Fury wasn't going to kill you that day when you let him go?" She asked him.

Hiccup nodded, confused. "Yes, you told me so yourself." He stated with a raised brow, not understanding what was happening.

"But you're afraid right now, aren't you?" The auburn-haired woman said slowly, silencing his protests with a raised hand. "It's alright to be afraid, Hiccup. You're so new to this world: a world where dragons and humans can coexist in prosperity without the need of such useless bloodshed. You're afraid, not of the Night Fury and danger, but of rejection."

"H-How?" Hiccup stumbled out, eyes wide in shock that the woman knew the true cause of his hesitance. He wasn't scared off the dark dragon watching them, but he was terrified of once again offering his friendship and love to someone who would only take all that hope and crush it before him with swift rejection as all the villagers and their children had done during his childhood.

"I was the same as you, once." The woman placed a calming hand on his shoulder, fingers lightly grasping onto him as though in support. "But I left that life years ago, I left my old life of rejection and alienation for a life amongst dragons. I have never regretted my decision, not once. I would never trade the bond Cloudjumper and I share for anything in the world."

The Stormcutter purred at her words, which made the woman smile up at the four-winged dragon with bright eyes.

"Do you trust me, Hiccup?" She asked him seriously.

"I-I," Hiccup stammered out. He tried to think of reasons why he didn't trust her. He hadn't known her until a few days ago. He didn't even know her  _name_  for Thor's sake. But yet despite the glaring holes of Hiccup's understanding of this enigma before him, he couldn't help but remember that while he had only known her for a few days, she had done so much for him.

She talked to him and actually listened to what he had to say instead of pushing him aside like everyone on Berk did. She said she cared about him, and he believed her. No one had ever truly cared about him besides his mother, but she was dead. She had opened his eyes to an entirely new world full of possibilities for him. She trusted him with pieces of her past. But most of all, what Hiccup believed was the most important, this woman accepted Hiccup for just being Hiccup. She didn't view him as Chief Stoick the Vast's disappointment of a son. She didn't see him as the most unViking Viking in the history of the Hairy Hooligan tribe. She didn't see him as the pathetic runt always making trouble, the little hiccup who was just so useless that everyone called him that so often it felt like a second name. Instead this woman accepted him, frail body and sarcasm included, and she didn't scoff at his horrible attempts of trying to prove himself to someone willing to look at him, she didn't mock him behind his back, she didn't think him weak or frail or anything of the sort.

She didn't reject him, but rather accepted him.

So despite only knowing her for only a few days, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third could safely say that he trusted this woman.

"Yes, I do. I trust you."

The woman blinked at him, as though surprised by his answer and the sincerity in his tone that was one hundred percent genuine. She glanced over at Cloudjumper, who slowly crawled forward slowly, so not to startle Hiccup. She placed a hand atop the Stormcutter's snout, idly stroking his scales.

"Even Cloudjumper and I got off to a bit of a rough start," She admitted with a small smile, eyes suddenly lost in memory as her smile turned bitter and sad.

Hiccup remembered what she had told him that first night, how it had been the Stormcutter before them who had taken the nice woman from the village that despised her and her unpopular opinions… and from her family. Away from her Viking husband and infant son, who was still in the cradle. Hiccup could see that at the beginning, the woman must have been at least a little bit bitter towards the Stormcutter for taking her from her loved ones, but now as he looked upon the woman and dragon Hiccup only saw a camaraderie between the two different species. Whenever she moved closer, Cloudjumper leaned forward as though ready to leap to her defense, whenever he shuffled his wings, the woman glanced around the clearing for any danger. They were constantly watching the other, watching each other's backs and looking out for one another. They weren't just friends, they were something else entirely.

Hiccup wanted the bond the woman and Cloudjumper shared. He wanted to have someone watching his back, someone who would always notice him and not ignore him, someone who loved him as much as Cloudjumper loved the woman before him. He wanted that friendship. He had never wanted anything so greatly before, but the idea of having a friend -even if it  _was_  with a  _dragon_ \- was too tempting, too great a thought to be ignored, cultural customs be damned. He didn't care if he gained a friend who happened to be what his people claimed their enemy, because he didn't care about that. He just wanted a friend. That was all he had ever wanted.

Cloudjumper was staring at him, no hostility set within his amber eyes but rather a curious warmth. The Stormcutter grinned at him, serrated teeth revealed in a toothy grin that should have made Hiccup uneasy at the sight but he only smiled back just as brightly.

Slender fingers, rough to the touch, gently wrapped around his hand. He looked at the hand's owner, staring at the dragon lady who only smiled at him as she raised his hand until it was chest-high with the palm spread.

"If you trust me, than you must trust Cloudjumper as well." She said softly as Cloudjumper slowly crawled forward, a warm rumble erupting from his massive chest as the dragon stared into the eyes of his rider's child.

Hiccup didn't feel any fear as he looked into the eyes of Cloudjumper. His eyes were so warm they were like miniature suns; Hiccup slowly stepped forward as the woman took away her hand from his own. The palm was shaky, but rather in nervousness of what Hiccup knew was to happen.

Cloudjumper drew closer, nose plates flaring at the scent of Hiccup curiously.

Hiccup didn't close his eyes as his fingers suddenly found themselves pressed to the snout of a dragon. He stared at Cloudjumper in awe, fingers slowly roaming the sleek scales, he couldn't help but be in awe of how  _warm_ Cloudjumper was. He had never felt something as alien as this dragon, but yet it comforted him. Hiccup laughed despite himself, beaming as he slowly trailed his fingers down a protruding spike.

For Hiccup, he felt no fear at the touch of a dragon. Hiccup felt the nervousness ebb away as though extinguished by Cloudjumper's warmth, like dew in the harsh sunlight.

For Valka, the sight of her son before her beloved dragon companion brought tears to her eyes, though they did not spill. Never in her life had she ever thought this to be possible: to see her only child interact with her greatest friend. It was such a beautiful sight to her. Her two worlds merging to form one, both of her dreams merging and uniting in a harmonious

Hiccup laughed, all nervousness leaving him, as his fingers trailed across the blue chin, awed at the smoothness of the scales. It was unlike anything he had done before.

There was a small movement in the corner of his peripheral vision, and Hiccup turned around to see the Night Fury watching him curiously, head cocked to the side slightly. Hiccup nervously looked over at the woman, who was watching him, she nodded her head as she smiled.

He slowly reached out to the Night Fury who, to his delight, didn't shy away from his touch. The dark dragon was looking at him suspiciously, but there was no hostility in those great green orbs, only curiousness. He remembered what the woman said about first interacting with a wild dragon and did not reach towards his snout, now knowing that doing so often scared the dragon by getting so close. He was a wild dragon after all, and dragons weren't exactly known for being passive towards humans.

Hiccup instead touched the dragon's tail, feeling the smooth scales, but he paused when he noticed something wrong with the tail. There was a tailfin on the right, but on the left there was nothing. Hiccup leaned closer, noticing slight scarring against the tip of the tail on the left side. "Where…?" Hiccup began to ask, before trailing off when he realized that the dragon was missing a piece of his tail.

Hiccup saw the woman's smile slip off her face.

Hiccup looked back at the tail, frowning. But then his eyes widened greatly as realization hit him with the force of a rampaging yak.

Hiccup swallowed, but it felt as though something was stuck in his throat. Disgust tore at him, making the little pink scar on the tail seem even more apparent. He had done that. He had caused that scar. He had crippled the Night Fury. He had trapped the dragon on the ground, never to fly again, never to be free.

Hiccup felt as though Snoutlout had punched him in the gut with all his might, the air leaving him in an instant, as he understood the situation. The Night Fury had lost his tailfin during the crash. The crash that Hiccup caused. Sweet Freyja, no wonder the Night Fury didn't like him! Hiccup had taken away his flight from him forever.

He felt so ashamed as he looked at the tail, looking at the right tailfin and then at the empty space on the left. He knew that as someone who called Berk home, feeling ashamed for crippling a dragon would have been ludicrous, but Hiccup wasn't the villagers. When Vikings rejoiced in battle and conflict, Hiccup grew upset at the very thought of hurting another living being. Living a life full of pain and isolation from his peers had made Hiccup sensitive to the pain of others, knowing what it was like to feel hopeless as the Night Fury must feel whenever he tried to fly and only crashed back to the ground. Guilt flooded him, filling him up to the core as he looked away at the crippled tail with a wince.

_I did that._

The thought filled him with loathing directed at himself.

"It's not your fault." The woman spoke in a gentle whisper, seeing the pain in Hiccup's eyes that was beginning to fill with glistening tears.

Hiccup felt his eyes burning; he hurriedly wiped away at the forming tears with the cuff of his dirty sleeve. He couldn't cry, not here, not now. Crying didn't solve anything; Hiccup had learned that a long time ago when he was a child. Hiccup had learned that the isolation and ridicule aimed towards him wouldn't be fixed with hot, furious tears. If anything crying only made things worse. "Yes it is. I shot him down, I crippled him."

"It was an accident." She countered him, her voice soft as though to comfort him.

Hiccup snorted at that. He hadn't shot down the Night Fury on accident; he had gone out of his way to take down the elusive Offspring of Lightning and Death. He had been fixated  _–obsessed-_  by the elusive dream of a life where he wasn't a social stigma if he shot down the sole dragon a Viking had never killed before in the history of Vikings. He had crippled the dragon that was right before him, letting him touch him, on the sole basis of achieving a dream.

But that all that it was. A dream. Something that would never become reality, but would forever remain in Hiccup's wildest fantasies.

Hiccup had shot down the dragon, but when he tried to tell the others of his victory, nobody believed him. Not even his father or Gobber, the only two Vikings in the village that didn't positively hate him, had even thought for a second that he was telling the truth instead of sprouting out lies. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Hiccup the Useless, had taken down a dragon no Viking had ever taken down, and nobody had even believed in him for a moment, nobody had cared.

It  _hurt_.

It was as though there was a throbbing hole where his heart was, raw and aching at the terrible realization that his life would never,  _ever,_  change for the better. Hiccup would forever be known as Hiccup the Useless. He would always be shouldered aside by his peers, ignored and avoided. He would never have a friend his own age in the village. He would probably never have a friend at all in Berk. And those realizations, something he had always wondered when everyone slept at night, had been what made him desperate for just a sliver of recognition.

That was why nobody believed him when he declared to his fellow villagers that he, Hiccup, had taken down a Night Fury. They didn't believe him because Hiccup had always tried so desperately for any recognition that everyone would assume that Hiccup would lie to everyone about shooting down a dragon no Viking had ever felled. They assumed that he was just telling tall tales just to get respect, because they all knew that there was no way in Helheim that Hiccup could be respected when he was, well,  _Hiccup!_

As if  _Hiccup_  of all people would be the first Viking to ever take down a Night Fury! The very notion of that ridiculous idea would have made the villagers howl with laughter. To them, Hiccup would always just be a hiccup, an annoying, pathetic runt who could never uphold to the glory and might of the tribe.

Hiccup felt something warm on his cheek. He glanced at it to see a hand pressed against him, a thumb gently wiping away a stray tear that had managed to escape from his watery green eyes. The woman was looking at him with matching eyes, looking so sad and pained it made Hiccup's heart jolt at the look, because it was a matching look shared between the two of them; it was like looking into a mirror.

"Do you remember what I said last night, Hiccup?" She asked so softly, it was barely above a whisper but he heard her easily enough.

He tried to remember, he really did, but he struggled to recall everything the woman had said the other night because she had spoken so much and about so many things. He shook his head, for once not knowing what to say, the answer dying on his lips before he could so much as utter a single word.

Her frown seemed to get deeper, sorrow and pain etched into her aging features. "You're strong, Hiccup. Far stronger than you will ever know."

"But not where it counts," he whispered back to her, unable to hide the dark bitterness in his tone. He would never have his father's stocky build. He would never be able to swing a battleaxe with a single hand. He would never be able to go toe to toe with a Monstrous Nightmare and expect to come out of it with all limbs attached. He would never be a Viking. He would never make his father and the village proud. Not when he was like this, in this pitifully small body with too much brains and no brawn. He couldn't be Hiccup in the village and expect acceptance and adoration; it just wasn't possible.

The woman frowned deeper as there was a lapse of silence, as though trying to think of something, as though she was arguing with herself on what to say to him. "That's what you think right now… but that can change." She stated firmly, moving her hand from Hiccup's cheek to firmly grasp the boy's thin shoulder with a grip like iron. "You just have to let me show you."

"Is it possible…" he began to say to her, voice hoarse and shaky with sorrow and desperation. "Can I really find myself a friend?"

He had always wanted a friend…

The nameless woman smiled, eyes watery, before nodding slowly. "Once you gain a dragon's trust, there is nothing that he won't do for you. He'll be your friend, your best friend." Her voice suddenly became eager, "I can teach you how to do so. But you must understand this, Hiccup Haddock. A dragon will only befriend and trust you if you do the same. I cannot force a bond upon a dragon. All the bonds that I have created with dragons have been created through love and acceptance. If you do not wish this, than I will not force you to stay here. A dragon can see into your heart and soul, he will know if you truly want to be his friend."

Hiccup nodded, looking at the Night Fury with wide eyes. His own friend… Hiccup had always wanted a friend. It didn't matter that his friend would be a dragon, because even if he did have scales and a tail, a friend was a friend at the end of the day.

"I've always wanted a friend," Hiccup said softly, almost dreamily, not realizing that he had said it aloud. The woman's face seemed to stricken at his words, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

"Now there is only one thing left," the woman said, trailing off as Hiccup clung to her every word with rapture.

"What's that?" Hiccup asked.

"What shall we name him?" The woman asked him, clapping her fingers together in energetic excitement. Naming a dragon was always an important step in training them, it was when one realized that both dragon and human were equals, instead of man and beast. Hiccup would realize that the Night Fury wasn't some mindless animal, but an intelligent creature who was most likely smarter than a village full of Vikings put together.

"Uh, I don't really know," Hiccup scratched the back of his neck, looking rather unsure of himself at this sudden change. "I've never named anything. You should name him, you named Cloudjumper after all." He nodded his head in the direction of the Stormcutter who warbled at them warmly.

The auburn-haired woman smiled at that, Hiccup felt something jolt in his stomach as though Gobber had dropped an anvil on him. Hiccup realized that he liked it when she smiled.

 _That is because we have a bond, my son. A bond that you and the Night Fury will soon share as well. I named Cloudjumper because of how quickly he could fly through the clouds, as though he was jumping. You must name him._ Valka thought to herself.

"I won't name him,  _you_  will." She said.

Stoick's son looked at her as though she had suddenly sprouted another head. "M-Me?" He asked timidly, not knowing what to say. He knew that naming the Night Fury was important, and nobody had ever,  _ever_  let him handle something important.

The woman nodded her head, green eyes wide and gleaming with a twinkle in her eye. Hiccup was still unnerved by how familiar she looked, but yet no name came to him. Maybe she was a former Bog Burglar or a former member of the Meathead Tribe who sometimes came to Berk for trade or to brawl. He wished he knew. He would figure it out later, he was confident of it, but right now he had an important task to do, given by the woman before him, and he would make her proud of him, he would prove to her that he wasn't useless like Berk believe him to be.

Hiccup remembered how the dragon had smiled, showing off his toothless gums for the world to see. He snapped his fingers, "I got it! Gums!" He declared proudly.

Valka tilted her head at that in confusion. "Gums?" She questioned, not understanding where her son had gotten the name.

Hiccup nodded enthusiastically, "Yeah! He has toothless gums! So… Gums…" He trailed off when he realized that the Night Fury was glaring at him with what could only be indignation. His face fell dejectedly, "You don't like it?"

The Night Fury huffed and turned his back to him, showing his displeasure. Hiccup wished the ground would swallow him; he was so embarrassed that he had botched up the first important task ever given to him.

"Maybe you should try again, Hiccup." Valka told him gently, knowing that the boy was hurt by the dragon's rejection of the name. She could see that he was hurt and thus she placed an across his shoulder, wrapping it around him comfortingly. Hiccup looked up at her with wide green eyes that matched Valka's own. He looked at her arm confused, as though he didn't know what to do.

 _He probably doesn't,_  Valka thought to herself angrily.  _Stoick never was good with feelings, has he ever even hugged our child? Oh, if I weren't trying to stay dead in his and the villagers' minds I would fly over to that village on Cloudjumper and kick their-_

"Okay…" Hiccup's small voice brought her out of her motherly rage. He looked up at her with complete seriousness, determined to find the perfect name for the elusive Night Fury.

 _Odin, this is hard,_  Hiccup thought to himself.  _Come on, Hiccup, think. It's just like naming a sheep or a yak! Well not really… I mean I'm naming a dragon, and a Night Fury to boot… what is his name? Shriek? He does make that shrieking sound when he's about to shoot something, but that just doesn't feel right… Midnight? No… Uh, Streak? He flies pretty fast… wait, but he can't fly anymore… what is notable about him, besides his toothless gums? Wait…. Toothless…_

Hiccup realized he had found the perfect name for the Night Fury.

"Toothless. His name is Toothless."

The dragon turned around when he spoke, his pupils rapidly dilating and the dragon warbled out something contently. Hiccup smiled widely as he realized he had gotten it right.

Toothless smiled back.


	9. The Tailfin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiccup comes to a realization about the repercussions of his actions, and tries to make it right.

"An with one twist, he took my hand an' swallowed it whole!" Gobber was regaling the semicircle of Vikings teenagers with the tale of how he had lost his limbs; Hiccup wasn't really paying attention to his mentor as he had heard the story countless of times. There were only so many times Gobber's vividly descriptive tales of mutilation remained somewhat interesting until it got dull. The other Vikings were listening to the blacksmith with awed looks, looking at Gobber's stump –which was currently a sharp skewer with a whole chicken on it- with looks of wonder.

"And I saw the look on his face," Gobber gestured towards each and every Viking huddled around him with his roasting chicken. "I was delicious," he declared, somewhat smugly. "He must'a passed the word because it wasn' a month later before another one took mah leg." He lifted up his peg leg for the world to see.

The Viking teenagers uttered soft utters of "Wow" and "Awesome", as though they thought losing a limb was some type of medal they all wanted. As though the loss of a limb was something to be envious of, but, seeing as how it was a battle wound that was much more mean-looking than a simple burn or scar, it probably did hold a place of envy for the young Viking trainees.

Hiccup didn't really care much for this specific story, but least it was better than Gobber's farfetched stories of the Boneknapper and how he was saved from the skeleton dragon with the aid of a hammerhead whale, a hammerhead yak, Thor, and even the hammerhead yak riding the hammerhead whale.

"Isn't it weird to think that your hand was inside a dragon, like if your mind was still in control of it," Fishlegs Ingerman smashed his two chicken drumsticks together to emphasis his point, not seeing Astrid's look of revulsion when she was almost hit by the meaty appendage. "You could have killed the dragon from the inside, by crushing its heart or something."

"I swear I'm so angry right now," Snotlout, Hiccup's meathead of a cousin, snarled out as he clenched onto his own skewer with a small chicken roasting on it. "I'll avenge your beautiful hand and foot. I'll chop off the legs of every dragon I fight with my  _face._ " Hiccup's brutish cousin declared, not seeing his older cousin rolling his eyes at his words.

Gobber, picking at his teeth for a piece of stuck chicken, spoke. "Nah, it's the wings and the tails you really want." Gobber ripped off his chicken's frail wings cooked to a crisp for emphasis. "If it can't fly than it can't get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon." He affirmed with a nod, not noticing the queasy and uncertain look on Hiccup's face.

Hiccup felt revolted as though he had just drank a whole pitcher of spoilt yak milk in one swallow. Had he really cursed Toothless to a life on the ground, and maybe even death? The dragon lady, Hiccup really wished he knew her name, had mentioned the fact that the Night Fury was missing his left tailfin and couldn't fly. She had sounded so angry and upset, as though someone had chopped off her own leg, was Gobber's blunt explanation why? Because she knew that the elusive Strike Class dragon would most likely not survive without the ability of flight?

 _He_  had torn off the dragon's tailfin when he had shot the dragon down during the raid with his bola launcher. If Toothless died because he couldn't fly away, then it would be Hiccup's fault. The thought tore at him from the inside, guilt seeping through him at the thought of being responsible for the dragon's containment on the ground and, maybe soon, his death. He couldn't let that dragon die. His conscience wouldn't let him. His heart wouldn't let him.

He quietly lowered down his smoking fish on the bench and quietly slipped into the shadows of night. Nobody noticed him leave; they were all too focused on Gobber to notice somebody like Hiccup. All but one, that is.

Astrid Hofferson was looking at the smoking fish and the empty seat with a narrowed glare, there was something about the chief's son that just didn't sit well with her. Maybe she was still bitter about the Gronckle and the Deadly Nadder, or maybe she was just curious on where Stoick's son spent his afternoons away from everyone else.

But then Tuffnut suddenly started screaming because Ruffnut had poked him in the stomach with a smoking iron spot because the other twin had been going off about some birthmark of destiny that made him better than his sister. The twins began to grapple one another, their spindly limbs flailing wildly as Snotlout cheered on and Fishlegs held into his dinner and Astrid forgot all about Hiccup Haddock the Third as she tried to avoid the flailing limbs of the idiotic siblings.

He sketched and sketched until his charcoal pen was but a stub, thick parchment was strewn chaotically across his small worktable and his fingers ached. The boy himself was pouring out all of his genius and creativeness into making an invention that wouldn't hurt dragons –unlike his other ones- but rather help a dragon. Toothless was missing a tailfin, he couldn't fly without one and couldn't grow another one.

But could Hiccup replace Toothless' missing tailfin with an invention of his own design? He was determined to try it at the very least.

He never slept during that night, even when all the others save for the guards had long since fallen asleep. He wasn't tired in the slightest, the guilt of crippling Toothless weighed too heavily on Hiccup for him to fall asleep when he knew that he was responsible for the Night Fury's inability to fly.

He couldn't let Toothless die.

Hiccup took to the forge with a goal in mind. He had spent countless nights laboring over machines and inventions created to kill or maim dragons in a hopeless effort to gain positive recognition and maybe even a girlfriend. This was the first time he, and mostly likely anyone in the history of everyone, would create something to help a dragon.

He began with smelting everything he could get his hands on. He took iron bolts off of old shields, rusted nails that couldn't poke through a piece of parchment. Anything made of iron that was lying around the forge Hiccup took.

He labored over his carefully drawn designs, he sweated whole oceans of sweat as he pumped the billows to start the forge despite the aching in his small arms; he strained his muscles until they ached from beating molten iron into slender rods. He grabbed the best strips of leather Gobber had stashed away and began to cut and sew the strips into what he hoped was a Night Fury's left tailfin.

Nobody entered the forge where the boy worked and Hiccup wasn't surprised. By the time he had finished creating the light, slender iron rods, the moon had already begun to slowly drift downwards towards the horizon. Nobody would notice that Hiccup wasn't at home; his father was gone and the house was empty. Nobody would notice his absence.

Hiccup wiped away sweat tricking down his brow, his face feeling overly warm from the forge's heat and exercise. His arms ached and his fingers trembled from exhaustion, and his body begged for respite but his heart and soul pushed away the need for much needed sleep. He had much more important things to do. If this worked, then Toothless could once again fly. Toothless could be free to soar in the skies, free from the cove that contained him, free from the threat of death by murderous Vikings, free to explore the earth.  _Free._

And maybe Hiccup could get another smile from the nice dragon lady. Hiccup had discovered that he loved nothing more than the lady's smiles; he especially loved it when that smile was directed at him.

He couldn't wait to see the look on her face when he showed her the prosthetic tailfin! He remembered, with a brutal wince, the look of pure despair that seemed to age the woman when she told Hiccup that the dragon was crippled, and by Hiccup himself, though she never blamed him as though to spare his feelings even though Hiccup blamed himself. She looked so sad, as though it was she herself that had lost a piece of her body instead of the dragon. The former Viking truly cared about dragons, Hiccup could tell by how she interacted with the Stormcutter and Toothless; she cared for them and they cared for her just as much.

He wanted that too. He wanted it so much the want was like an ache burning in his chest.

He wanted to see her smile at him, to listen to her stories and experiences, to speak to her without any awkward silences or one-sided conversations. He might have only known her for only a couple of days, but she already knew so much about him. Hiccup had all but laid out his heart and soul to the woman, confessing his fears and insecurities to someone who should be a stranger but wasn't. He didn't know why he trusted her so much, maybe because she was the first to give Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third a person's complete trust. He had no one in Berk to call friend, not even his own cousin who shared his blood.

Perhaps because Hiccup had no one to call his friend, not even a casual acquaintance, the second he found someone who actually seemed to enjoy his company and Hiccup himself, the boy had latched onto the woman, and her companionship with those warm smiles, with all the strength he possessed.

But he didn't just want her attention and love, he wanted the same from Toothless. He  _wanted_  what the rider had told him what he and the Night Fury could be. They could be friends, maybe even best friends.  _I would like that_ , Hiccup thought wistfully.

Those wishes were what kept Hiccup working into the wee hours of the dawn. Arms aching and fingers trembling but heart beating and ready to burst in pride as he looked at his completed tailfin.

It was simple in appearance, made of stretched, taut leather held by iron rods, but it would hopefully get the job done. He snapped it shut, grinning like a madman when he saw that it was capable of collapsing like a normal tailfin.

Hiccup suddenly felt his world spin as dark spots began to dance across his vision. The boy collapsed to the ground, clutching the tailfin tightly in his arms, as the boy fell unconscious. Despite this, the boy was smiling even whilst asleep.

Toothless could fly again.

He had done it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short chapter, but none the less important for Hiccup's character. Our poor boy just wants to make a friend.


	10. Forbidden Friendship

The cove was empty.

Panic set in as Hiccup desperately scanned the small cove for any sign of life, to glimpse a spiked mask paired with the owlish eyes of Cloudjumper peering down at him. He placed the dead fish closer to his chest, as though it could calm his speeding heart. The woman and her Stormcutter were nowhere to be found, it was as though she had simply vanished.

No, there was her campfire! Sure, no fire was actually burning, but it was still proof that she had been here and that these past couple of days hadn't just been some hallucination of a socially awkward teenager desperate for companionship.

He heard a warble behind him, soft and guttural in nature. He jerked around, arms wrapped around tightly the dead fish, and there he was. Toothless. The Night Fury was watching the boy curiously from atop a boulder, tail wagging and eyes set upon him, before bounding down to the ground in a lithe, feline motion, slowly creeping forward, nostrils flaring at the scent of fish.

Hiccup relaxed at the sight of the dragon, giving the Night Fury a small, uneasy smile. "Hey, Toothless."

He was fearful, but not about getting eaten or blown to bits by the approaching dragon. Just as the woman had said the day before, it was the fear of rejection clawing away at his insides. He didn't want to go and make yet another offer of friendship just to have it thrown back in his face. All the others had done it, so why wouldn't Toothless? He was  _Hiccup_ ; nobody liked him!

Flashes of a wild woman with a soft smile and kinder words rushed through his mind, a warm reminder that someone did at least seem to like him. Then he remembered Cloudjumper, the Stormcutter who had allowed Hiccup to touch him and had given the boy a toothy grin. He felt a foreign surge of confidence slowly fill him up, giving him just enough willpower to hold out the fish to Toothless.

The Night Fury gobbled the fish down with great gusto, his tongue lolling out of his tongue in a dragonish beam. Hiccup couldn't help but grin at the dragon's visible pleasure, Toothless  _was_  rather friendly if one were to overlook the stigma Vikings had placed upon all dragons. Such an adorable dragon didn't really seem to deserve such a terrifying moniker as the Unholy Offspring of Lightning and Death, he thought.

Suddenly Toothless spat out a bit of the fish by Hiccup's feet. The dead eyes of the cod seemed to stare up at the boy, whilst its spine stuck out from where the bottom half had been eaten by the ravenous Night Fury.

"Erhm…" Hiccup began, looking at the half-digested fish head, bile rising in his throat as he remembered the last time he had eaten raw, scaled fish just a few nights prior. "You know what? You can have that." He gave the dragon as respectful and natural a smile as he could give.

There was a moment where Toothless looked at him, then the fish, then back to Hiccup, and then there was a small shudder of his lithe shoulders, almost like a shrug, and Toothless happily gobbled it up in one fluid motion.

Hiccup could only stare, completely entranced by that black hide of scales that glimmered like crystallized night sky. Before he even knew what had been happening, he found his hand raised ahead, daring to touch the dragon. His fingers stretched out, desperate to touch those beautiful black scales and to prove to himself that forming a bond with Toothless was possible and not some far-fetched fantasy that would never come true.

Would it have been so bad, he wondered? They had gotten off rather shakily, if his shooting Toothless down and permanently grounding him was anything to go by. Maybe he was going too fast and for all he knew the dragon still held some trace of a grudge against him. But what could it hurt to at least try just this once?

His fingers didn't even graze the dragon's hide before Toothless bounced away, shying away from the outstretched fingers with slightly flared nostrils huffing into the air and staring back at him with his head tilted to the side quizzically.

Disappointment burned in the back of his throat, nearly choking Hiccup with its iron-clad grip.

Perhaps he was right, and this dragon didn't like him; maybe Toothless would never like him. Maybe it was just his unlikeable nature rearing its ugly head and crushing him again, and this dragon only stuck around because it saw a chance at an easy meal.

It made sense to the boy, even as his heart ached as though it had been run through with a thousand swords. Hiccup wasn't the woman; he didn't have that magical bond with dragons like she did, he sorely lacked the charisma that the woman had when it came to dragons, feeling awkward around the creatures while the woman felt right at home. Heck, Hiccup had no charisma with the people he had lived with his whole life, and he didn't know what to do when surrounded by the people who hated every bit of him due to him being their complete opposite in terms of everything. He did not have any of her endless knowledge that had come from a lifetime of living amongst dragons, little pieces of information that she had internalized as a form of common sense, while Hiccup couldn't tell the difference between a dragon hating him or liking him. He also didn't have her will that he so greatly admired.

Hiccup was not the dragon lady, and maybe without her here with him now, there was no reason for Toothless to give him the time of day, much less the companionship that the woman and her Stormcutter shared that Hiccup so desperately wished for.

Was even one friend of his own too much for the gods to give him?

Toothless let out a soft warble followed by a sharp draconic bark to snap him out of it. Only once he was set back in reality did he notice the dragon wriggling like one of his inventions bursting apart at the seams. The dragon was a bundle of energy, wriggling his bottom, hopping from side to side, practically bouncing from the spring in his step. The Night Fury suddenly arched his back, like a cat about to pounce, and stared at Hiccup with unblinking eyes, simply waiting. There was no hostility in those great green eyes.

Hiccup swallowed down his fears again and tried to touch Toothless a second time, but the dragon hopped away again, tongue still lagging out of his mouth. But yet again there was no hostility in those eyes, if anything Toothless looked excited.

And then the scrawny teenager realized what was actually happening, and the horrible pain throbbing in his chest suddenly seemed to leave him at his moment of clarity. Toothless was shying away from his touch, but he wasn't  _rejecting_  anything as Hiccup had originally thought and feared.

Toothless wasn't rejecting him; he was  _playing_  with him.

When he shied away from Hiccup's wriggling fingers that were so desperate to touch those dark scales; the dragon was simply playing a game. Toothless just wanted to play.

 _Tag…_  Hiccup thought numbly.  _He wants to play tag._

It was such a childish idea to think that was what the dragon truly wanted, but it made sense oddly enough. It wasn't as though games were exclusive to only humans; Hiccup had seen the odd Terrible Terror or two chasing one another playfully on the rocky shore, though they were always chased away by Snoutlout or one of the twins who had made a game of throwing stones at the little dragons. He had seen young yak ewes playing with one another in the fields, slamming their heads together in an what could only be explained in human terms as their version of play-fighting. Surely dragons, no matter the species, had some part of them that enjoyed games. If the Terrible Terrors had their own form of games, did that mean Night Furies did too?

"Is that it?" Hiccup asked Toothless, who merely continued to stare at him. "You just want to play?" Toothless' bottom wiggled, his maimed tail waving excitedly.

Grinning, Hiccup swallowed away that last nerve and lunged forward at the dragon, fingers outstretched, but Toothless quickly leapt out of the way, bottom still wagging. Boy and dragon stared at one another, one incredulous and the other mischievously playful.

This time, though, there was no pain at all, no scream-inducing wound inside him; but rather an odd feeling within his chest that somehow gave him confidence to try once more.

Hiccup lunged again, determined fingers outstretched as far as they could go. Toothless bounded away in the opposite direction, Hiccup barreling passed as he tried to clumsily stop in his tracks.

_Thwack!_

Hiccup stumbled, hand darting to the small of his back where the dragon's tail had butted into him playfully. Hiccup looked at the Night Fury, who was smiling that odd gummy grin, and laughed.

"Oh,  _it's on_."

What happened afterwards passed in a blur. It felt as though it had become a happy game of tag between the human and boy, with Hiccup trying to touch Toothless and the dragon bounding away with a lolling tongue. It was like two children playing together in such an innocent way that could only be described as utter joy and naïveté.

It was breathtakingly beautiful to Hiccup as he lunged and stretched his fingers to touch the sleek dark scales of Toothless, only to miss by the dragon's quick reflexes. But he wasn't deterred anymore, Toothless' rumbling laughter seemed to give him energy and he continued onwards, despite the aching in his lungs. The ache didn't bother him as it normally would have – physical activity never having been one of Hiccup's strong suits- because it seemed as though the euphoria that came from being with Toothless seemed to have numbed it.

For what seemed like an eternity to the two, the mid-morning sun grew higher in the sky, before slowly beginning its descent towards the horizon. Neither of them seemed to notice the time that passed by, as both were too caught up in their game to notice anything but the other. For Hiccup and Toothless during their playful game of tag, nothing else existed. It was just them. Boy and dragon. Dragon and boy.

"Come back here!" Hiccup yelled out jovially, cheeks tinged a dark red from exertion as Toothless barked out something as the dragon nimbly dodged his touch and ran away into a different direction with Hiccup running after him.

Toothless bounded towards a lone tree, corded muscles bustled together for a single moment, before the dragon leapt into the air, wings flaring outwards as Toothless gave a single flap of his black taut wings, rising high as though gravity held no claim to the creature, before his claws sunk into the tender bark and the Night Fury swiftly scaled up the tree in a matter of seconds, before hauling himself onto a suitable branch that could support his weight. Bright green eyes peered downwards at the wide-eyed Viking child with something bright shining in those massive orbs, playful laughter warbled out of the dragon's gummy maw. Toothless' eyes almost blended in with the green foliage of the tree, though the leaves were more of a softer hue while the green in the dragon's eyes reminded Hiccup of emerald fire.

Hiccup gaped up at the dragon, now high above him, with shock and awe at just how  _fast_  Toothless was. He had seen how fast a Night Fury could fly from all those raids –the sudden explosions that rocked Berk to its core, the harsh whistle of rushing wind as the attacker zipped past, a ghostly shriek that echoed throughout the memories and nightmares of those who survived against an unbeatable foe- but he hadn't realized that they were just as quick on their feet as they were in the air.

Hiccup slumped his shoulders as he stared up into the tree. There was no way he could climb it and, judging by the huffing warbles that sound suspiciously like laughter, Toothless seemed to realize it too.

"Cheater…" the boy mumbled as he stalked away, kicking at a stray rock as he moved towards the pond. Toothless just gave another amused warble from his perch, looking like a monstrously large bird.

Hiccup, resigned, settled upon the most comfortable looking rock he could find and just sat there, listening to the sounds of the forest. From the twittering robins and harsh squawks of crows, to the slight rustling of the wind against the brittle nestles of the towering pine trees, and of course Toothless' soft, warm purring. Whatever sunlight that managed to pierce through the gloomy clouds that always hung in Berk's sky came down in thin rays, illuminating the well-trodden dirt a dusty gold. Hiccup wouldn't say that it was warm, as it was  _never_  warm in Berk, but at least the wool cloth of his garments would keep the chill out, even if it was rather scratchy against his skin.

The Viking child noticed a stick near him, and grabbed it. He idly shifted it around in his hands, fingers brushing against the smoothness of the wood, and began to lazily draw whatever came to mind. It started with simple arcs that swept up the dirt into a thin and shallow rut, before bringing the stick downwards in a wide sweep with the flick of his wrist. Hiccup didn't really pay much attention to exactly what he was drawing, but was rather content to let his mind wander as he continued to move the stick around.

A vague memory of Bork's Dragon Manual and no known drawings of Night Furies came to Hiccup's mind, making him pause and sit up straighter on the rock. Hiccup glanced over at Toothless, still perched in the tree and watching him, before looking back at the ground, inspiration slowly forming within him.

"Huh…" Hiccup murmured as he smoothed the dirt with the flat of his palm, as he reflected on what Gobber had told him back in the Kill Ring during the Deadly Nadder fiasco when Hiccup, curious about the elusive dragon, had asked his mentor on whether or not there was any information on Night Furies.

There had been none.

No sketches, no general idea of what one looks like, no statistics, strengths and weaknesses. Only a dire warning to stay well away from them unless one wanted to die a miserable, gruesome death. Granted, Hiccup didn't believe in that last bit, but it was rather interesting that he was looking at a dragon that had thrived on the fringes of myth and legend. Some Vikings even claimed that they didn't exist, as none had ever seen one and survived. Those behind such claims thought that whatever attacked them was some vengeful wraith instead of a living creature.

Maybe it was just easier for them that way. Better a dark spirit that could be repelled by charms than having to face the reality that they were helpless against a dragon that they couldn't shoot down, strike or even  _see._  It was easier to accept a vengeful wraith than an unconquerable dragon. No wonder why the villagers hadn't believed him when he informed them of his terrible act, though at the time it had seemed to be his greatest accomplishment. When half the world believed it unconquerable and the other didn't even believe they were real, it was easy for them to wave off Hiccup's claims without pause. Who would honestly believe that Hiccup Haddock would be the first in the history of Vikings, who excelled and thrived on killing dragons, to shoot down a Night Fury?

No one.

 _I'm one of the few people in history to see a Night Fury, and survive to tell the tale. Not that anyone would believe me, of course,_ Hiccup thought.  _If I draw Toothless, I might be the first person to ever sketch a Night Fury. Not even Bork the Bold could claim such prestige._

That was more than enough for Hiccup.

With thin lines formed within the dirt at his feet, the faintest resemblance of the shape of Toothless' head took form before he went off to another spot. Moments later he began to sketch out a wing, then a paw, then the torso, and so on. As time went on, and the drawing became more realistic, from the small details such as a collection of scales and some corded muscle, to a slow and extensive portrayal of his eyes with quick pokes of those rounded pupils. And just like that, what had started as an aimless doodle became a masterful portrait upon the earth without any sort of intent.

Hiccup, biting down on his lower lip in concentration, used the stick to scratch some lesser detail on the wings, remembering the look of the taut membranes he had seen when Toothless had flapped his way up the tree.

The sound of something heavy shuffling towards him and the feel of warm, heavy breathing on his neck lead to a pause in his drawing. Hiccup dared to peek behind his shoulder, suddenly finding himself staring face to face with Toothless, who was looking at the drawing with curiousness. The young Viking grinned to himself, feeling victorious for having Toothless come towards him rather than the other way around. Ever so slowly, he returned attention to his sketch in the dirt, trying to not feel self-conscious of the curious gaze burning into him. Suddenly the warm breath on his neck disappeared as he heard heavy shuffling get further away from him, he ignored it as he continued to draw a pair of ears.

_Crack!_

The sound of splintering wood made him all but leap from his seat, head swerving around only to come face to face with the oddest of sights. Toothless was slowly crawling towards him, a large branch, leaves and all, clamped in his mouth. The Night Fury glanced at Hiccup's drawing, before those green eyes flicked to him. Toothless stood up on his hind legs, towering over the boy.

The dragon began to walk on two feet, though to Hiccup it was more like a waddle, and dragged the broken tree limb with him, leaving deep ruts in the dry dirt. Hiccup watched, tongue-tied, as Toothless continued to drag the branch, sometimes suddenly turning around in a circle to create loops, and sometimes swiping the stick with a shake of his head.

Hiccup looked on, half of him amused and the other part astonished, as Toothless continued to draw messily on the ground with his branch.

The dragon continued to move about the cove, shaking his head and turning around in sudden, tight circles, the branch clamped between his rounded teeth. Hiccup didn't really see any type of pattern in the jumble of lines and curves, but it amused him that Toothless was trying to copy him.

Suddenly Toothless poked one last spot on the ground and spat out the branch, covered in tooth marks and saliva, and sat down with a low thump, a throaty rumble coming from his open maw as he surveyed his work with pride.

Hiccup slowly got onto his feet, curious to look closer at Toothless' drawing. He moved closer towards the dragon, until he accidently step on a line.

Toothless sprang to his feet and growled at him menacingly.

Hiccup, startled, hastily stumbled backwards at the sudden hostility.

Toothless' growl ended, and the dragon sat back down.

Confused, Hiccup paused. Toothless cocked his head at him, no hostility in his eyes. Eyes darting at the various lines spread out around him, Hiccup focused on where one of the lines had been smudged by his foot. Curious to see if he was correct, Hiccup placed a foot in the air, right above a line. He stared at Toothless, who simply stared back.

Foot down.

Growl.

Foot up.

Warm warble.

Foot down.

Growl. Hackles raised. Pupils mere slits. Teeth gnashed together in a snarl.

Foot up.

Warm warble. Hackles lowered instantly. Pupils rounded. Welcoming gummy smile.

"Huh," Hiccup said, laughing loudly in sheer amusement as he quickly moved himself out of the labyrinth of rutted lines, carefully ensuring that his feet did not touch the lines. He hopped over the last line, and headed towards Toothless with a grin.

The Night Fury appraised him with glowing green eyes, as though he had realized that Hiccup had been playing with him in regards to stepping onto his lines. Dark lips began to curl upwards, revealing a gummy maw, and Toothless leaned closer to the boy, nostrils flaring to pick up the boy's scent.

Something thrummed deep within Hiccup, and he felt the urge to pet those dark scales once again.

Hiccup raised his hand slowly, palm extended widely and slowing moved towards Toothless' snout. The dragon didn't growl at him, and didn't shy away from him, but Hiccup couldn't help but not be nervous. There was no masked woman here to ensure that they got along together, no one to alter interactions with her presence.

It was just Hiccup and Toothless.

Boy and dragon.

There was a moment of pause, both beings pausing their actions to just stare at one another, a wordless conversation shared between the two, something bending within their hearts.

Toothless gently pressed his snout against Hiccup's outstretched, trembling fingers. The boy almost seemed to jump out of his skin, shocked, but then he stared at Toothless and a smile began to form on his lips.

Toothless was warm, just as warm to the touch as Cloudjumper had been, and Hiccup found himself immersed as his fingers gently explored Toothless' face, his soul practically screaming with euphoria and triumph. Toothless let out a warm warble, bright green eyes staring into him with affection, and Hiccup felt a rush of love overcome him that was directed towards the Night Fury.

And, looking deep into the warm eyes of the Night Fury and seeing the same reflected in those green orbs, Hiccup knew that Toothless felt the same.

It felt nice.

No. That wasn't the word that he would use to describe it.

It felt…  _fitting?_

Yes, fitting.

It was as though two broken halves had been reformed, melded together perfectly at its ruined seams to become whole.

It felt  _right,_  even though Hiccup knew that many would consider it wrong.

What they were doing was unheard of. Unthinkable. Impossible. It was simply not meant to be in the minds of the human beings that had taken shelter against the fires of dragons. Humans and dragons did not live in coexistence. There was no such thing as peace between the two war-mongering species that had been spilling the other's blood for countless generations.

It was forbidden.

And somehow that made it all the better.

He was practically spitting in defiance of all he knew. He was turning his back to the teachings of his people, shunning the ways of his honorable dragon-killing ancestors, betraying all reason, distancing himself from his dragon-hating culture, and throwing away what was expected of him by those who he had been raised by.

It was terrifying.

He was betraying his heritage, his family, his culture, his people, his tribe, everything and everyone Hiccup knew would protest against this bond with a dragon. If anyone were to find out, his family name would be forever stained by the blood of a traitor, his legend nothing more than a mockery of a foolish boy who knew nothing of the real world, his father would be even more ashamed of Hiccup than before.

And yet… Hiccup found it incredibly difficult to muster any feelings of hesitation. He honestly couldn't find it in himself to care.

It was as though this single act was the key to bursting out of a restricting cage. It was as though some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders –the weight of his miserable attempts of holding up the expectations as the chieftain's son, the weight of a life alone, the weight of his father's disappointing gaze, the weight of the glares and whispers of the villagers that stabbed into his soul- and Hiccup honestly felt as though everything was right in the world.

"So… does this mean that we're friends now?" Hiccup asked, staring up at Toothless. Toothless' entire form seemed to shake from the monstrous purr that rumbled out of him, and the Night Fury gently butted his head against Hiccup's chest. He wrapped his arms around Toothless' head in an embrace, letting the dragon's warmth seep into his scrawny form, and Hiccup smiled as he received the dragon's answer. "Thanks, bud."

A massive tongue suddenly licked the side of his face, saliva sticking to his skin, before the dragon launched himself at the boy, pinning him down on the ground with his weight as Toothless happily licked the boy, who could only raise his arms to protect his face from the attacking tongue. "Urgh, Toothless! That better wash out!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's that good ol' solo Hiccup and Toothless bonding I promised! Hopefully it was worth the wait. If you enjoyed the chapter, leave a comment behind! They're the lifeblood of this story!


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